Dangerous Ambition

Press Release:

Born in the early 1890s on opposite sides of the Atlantic, these brilliant and ambitious women, Rebecca West, an English journalist, novelist, and critic, and Dorothy Thompson, an American journalist and first female head of a U.S. news bureau in Europe, defied convention to achieve unprecedented fame in a male-dominated era. Susan Hertog—author of the critically acclaimed Anne Morrow Lindberg, Her Life—delves deep into the complex life and legacy of two early feminists who tried to have it all in her new remarkable dual biography DANGEROUS AMBITION, Rebecca West and Dorothy Thompson: New Women in Search of Love and Power (Ballantine Books Hardcover; November 8, 2011).

By the mid-twentieth century, West and Thompson both reached astounding levels of professional achievement. Thompson was considered by FDR and Churchill to be the most influential woman in America. West, a formidable journalist, literary critic, and biographer by the age of 20, and a novelist and literary theorist by 30, was hailed across the English-speaking world for her literary genius. But even as their careers prospered, their personal relationships shattered. Drawn to men equally ambitious and hungry for love—Thompson to Sinclair Lewis, West to H. G. Wells—their relationships with their husbands and their sons would be sacrificed for the sake of their work. They broke the old rules and charted new waters; their lives tell the story of the price women paid for ambition and success.

The first book to impressively link the lives of West and Thompson, DANGEROUS AMBITION introduces readers to two women who were hugely important and respected in their day, and speaks to 21st century women and men as they struggle to reinvent their roles as parents and professionals.

About the Author:

Susan Hertog was born in New York City and graduated from Hunter College. After earning her MFA from Columbia University, she became a freelance journalist and photographer. She is the author of one previous book, Anne Morrow Lindberg, Her Life. She lives in Manhattan with her family.