"Renee Sentilles has written a scintillating book about a fascinating character. Adah Isaacs Menken was a poet, actress, publicity hound, and self-proclaimed bohemian who invented and re-invented herself dramatically in the middle years ofthe nineteenth century. This book finally puts 'the Menken,' as she was known at the peak of her fame, in the contexts that help us to understand her: the rise of celebrity culture, the shifting terms of gender, religious, and racial identity, changing public standards of taste, and the new America that was emerging during and after the Civil War." Joy Kasson, Univerisy of North Carolina at Chapel Hill