ISADORA: A SENSATIONAL LIFE

"Peter Kurth has written the best biography we have of an astonishing and often underrated woman. He writes so well that only the weight of paper will occasionally remind you of his subject’s amplitude. … Working from an assembly of sources vast enough to make you dizzy, he succeeds in making you love, hate and honor America’s greatest dancer, sometimes all at once. Earlier biographies have tended to focus on her, just as Isadora herself did. Kurth does better by giving vivid portraits of the lovers, friends and pupils whose voices make up a diverse chorus. … Shrewdly, he gives space not only to Isadora’s wonderfully feckless chum, Mary Desti, the creator of the scarf that throttled her, but to Preston Sturges, Desti’s film-making son. Preston’s amused, slightly spiky voice is, you will find, the one closest to Kurth’s own in this marvelously rich and well-told book. Isadora deserves to be taught as well as read; this is how biography should be written."— Sunday Times (London)