Stan and Gus

“In Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, a beautiful room can be a dangerous place … This paradox would have felt immediately real to Wharton’s first readers in Gilded Age New York. Colonnades may have lost some currency, but the dichotomy still stands–and it’s the kind that Henry Wiencek captures brilliantly in Stan and Gus … a bracing and masterful tag-team glimpse of two giants who helped make the turn of the century look so confident.” –Walker Mimms, The New York Times

“In the historian Henry Wiencek’s zesty new book Stan and Gus: Art, Ardor, and the Friendship That Built the Gilded Age, the robber barons may have had taste, but it was not their own. It was sourced to a cluster of aesthetes of the period, of whom the architect Stanford White and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens … were two of the most prominent … Erudite … Readers might want at least a hundred more [pages].” –John Sedgwick, Financial Times

“Wiencek details a fascinating portrait of the exclusive world of the architectural and art society in New York at the time, drunk on their ambitions to remake New York as the most cosmopolitan, shiny city in the world. Even among the rich, the social structure of traditions of ‘keeping up appearances’ allowed men to have affairs and live separate lives outside of their marriages, and it was even expected among the moneyed ‘Gilded Age’ class. Yep, we’ve heard it all before as it repeats itself 150 years later in ever-grotesque climaxes.” –Lewis Whittington, CultureVulture

“An intimate account of the professional and personal relationship between architect Stanford White and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens … [Stan and Gus] offers a colorful, captivating window into a fascinating historical era.” –Publishers Weekly

“Wiencek dexterously chronicles the fruitful thirty-year friendship of architect Stanford White and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who designed grand buildings and public art and ignored sexual taboos, leading to lurid tragedy … [Wiencek] effectively contextualizes their work and depicts Saint-Gaudens in particularly memorable detail … A brisk, absorbing portrait of troubled artistic allies whose work embodied an era.” –Kirkus Reviews

“The intertwined biographies of two Gilded Age artists reveal a complex relationship in electrifying, turbulent times … Highlighting his subjects’ larger-than-life personalities, the imbalances of their relationship, and the glittery, careening mess of their era, Wiencek ultimately celebrates the artistic impact Stan and Gus’ relationship would have upon New York City.” –Booklist

Henry Wiencek, a nationally prominent historian and writer, is the author of several books, including The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1999; An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Award; and Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

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