Deborah Hertz is Professor of European history and Herman Wouk Chair in Modern Jewish Studies, University of California at San Diego.

A welcome surprise... [Hertz] asks questions that have generally have been ignored about the origins and social significance of this curious phenomenon and the reasons why it vanished almost as quickly as it appeared; and because she then answers them on the basis of a staggering amount of reading on virtually every aspect of the history of the last phase of the old regime in Prussia." - New York Review of Books"An enlivening study of the era.... Its special appeal is to cover a neglected area of women's emancipation that has been both regretted and admired, since the role the salonieres carved out for themselves was so precarious and transitory." - Jewish Book News and Reviews

Deborah Hertz is Professor of European history and Herman Wouk Chair in Modern Jewish Studies, University of California at San Diego.

A welcome surprise... [Hertz] asks questions that have generally have been ignored about the origins and social significance of this curious phenomenon and the reasons why it vanished almost as quickly as it appeared; and because she then answers them on the basis of a staggering amount of reading on virtually every aspect of the history of the last phase of the old regime in Prussia." - New York Review of Books"An enlivening study of the era.... Its special appeal is to cover a neglected area of women's emancipation that has been both regretted and admired, since the role the salonieres carved out for themselves was so precarious and transitory." - Jewish Book News and Reviews

Deborah Hertz is Professor of European history and Herman Wouk Chair in Modern Jewish Studies, University of California at San Diego.

A welcome surprise... [Hertz] asks questions that have generally have been ignored about the origins and social significance of this curious phenomenon and the reasons why it vanished almost as quickly as it appeared; and because she then answers them on the basis of a staggering amount of reading on virtually every aspect of the history of the last phase of the old regime in Prussia." - New York Review of Books"An enlivening study of the era.... Its special appeal is to cover a neglected area of women's emancipation that has been both regretted and admired, since the role the salonieres carved out for themselves was so precarious and transitory." - Jewish Book News and Reviews