WSJ book review excerpt
I usually don't read the book reviews in the weekend Journal, but today I ran out of paper to read while on the subway, so I begrudgingly jumped in. I was knocked down by the review-slash-essay on patrician life -- it was a beautiful treat to have on my way home.

An excerpt:

"The patricians had their faults. They kept their feelings bottled up and spent a fair amount of time in bed, either engaged in amour or gripped by obscure funks that people today take pills for. Their cardinal therapeutic method -- "have a drink," the words pitched somewhere between a quetions an da command -- falls short of the contemporary hygienic ideal. In morals the upper crust inclined to libertinism and winked at what they called "naughtiness," though as a concession to virtue they insisted that the naughtiness be carried on discreetly."

--Michael Knox Beran (from his review of the book "My Three Fathers" in the Wall Street Journal weekend saturday/sunday july 12-13, 2008)