My Three Fathers: And the Elegant Deceptions of My Mother, Susan Mary Alsop - Hardcover

Bill Patten

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1586485555 ISBN 13: 9781586485559

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 2008

Synopsis

Bill Patten grew up in the heart of privileged society to American parents—a debutante mother, a diplomatic father—stationed in Europe. Weekends away from his English boarding school were often spent at the regal country estates of important policy makers and historical figures of the mid-twentieth century. When Bill was twelve years old, his father, William Patten, died, and his mother remarried the renowned columnist Joe Alsop. Patten was swept into Washington during the Kennedy years, where he bore witness to his stepfather's legendary power-brokering, and watched a very different father figure at work.

In 1996, when he was forty-seven years old, Bill Patten learned that his biological father was not William Patten, but the noted English diplomat, Duff Cooper. In this quest to know his triumvirate of fathers, Bill Patten offers an unforgettable memoir. My Three Fathers is a search for identity—and a luscious chronicle of a fascinating, bygone era of American aristocracy.

About this title

About the Author:

Bill Patten is a businessman with thirty years experience in real estate development. From 1978 to 1996 he published weekly newspapers in Maine. He has three children, two stepchildren, and three grandchildren. He lives in Worcester, Massachusetts, with his wife and stepdaughter.

Review:

"Wall Street Journal," July 12, 2008 "In his arresting memoir, "My Three Fathers," Mr. Patten describes the comedy of manners that results when this flower of a patrician order in which reticence ranks among the virtues is thrust into the atmosphere of modern confessional culture." "Washington Times," July, 27, 2008 "The details of Bill Patten's story are unique and fascinating but the process he describes of coming to terms with his family, while infinitely less complicated for most people, is a near universal one." "New York Review of Books," June 17, 2008 "Patten's memoir itself often seems like a satire on the international drinking aristocracy that flourished far back in the last century when life was more fun, as it always seems to have been in the good old days..."

About this edition

• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1586485555
• ISBN 13: 9781586485559
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400