Emily Post (2008)

Emily Post's groundbreaking 1922 manners tome Etiquette sold a stunning 1.5 million copies in her lifetime. Yet while the syndicated columnist and radio star counseled strangers (who called her at home, on her publicly listed phone number), even her own grandson later described their private relationship as ''rather formal.'' Laura Claridge's meticulously researched bio hints at a feistier Emily, who once ''plied her banjo like a flirtatious peacock'' as a Gilded Age debutante mingling with boldface names over oysters at Delmonico's. Only a few terse sentences go to the mistress who put Emily and her soon-to-be-ex husband on the front pages of every New York paper. Emily Post is a rich portrait of an era, but — like its subject — it has little time for idle gossip. B