Dead End Gene Pool: A Memoir
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
For generations the Burdens were one of the wealthiest families in New York, thanks to the inherited fortune of Cornelius "The Commodore" Vanderbilt. By 1955, the year of Wendy's birth, the Burden's had become a clan of overfunded, quirky and brainy, steadfastly chauvinistic, and ultimately doomed bluebloods on the verge of financial and moral decline-and were rarely seen not holding a drink. In Dead End Gene Pool, Wendy invites readers to meet her tragically flawed family, including an uncle with a fondness for Hitler, a grandfather who believes you can never have enough household staff, and a remarkably flatulent grandmother.
At the heart of the story is Wendy's glamorous and aloof mother who, after her husband's suicide, travels the world in search of the perfect sea and ski tan, leaving her three children in the care of a chain- smoking Scottish nanny, Fifth Avenue grandparents, and an assorted cast of long-suffering household servants (who Wendy and her brothers love to terrorize). Rife with humor, heartbreak, family intrigue, and booze, Dead End Gene Pool offers a glimpse into the fascinating world of old money and gives truth to an old maxim: The rich are different.
If you are having problem transferring a title to your device, please fill out this support form or visit the library so we can help you to use our eBooks and eAudio Books.
Wendy Burden. (2010). Dead End Gene Pool: A Memoir. Penguin Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Wendy Burden. 2010. Dead End Gene Pool: A Memoir. Penguin Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Wendy Burden, Dead End Gene Pool: A Memoir. Penguin Publishing Group, 2010.
MLA Citation (style guide)Wendy Burden. Dead End Gene Pool: A Memoir. Penguin Publishing Group, 2010.
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 1 | 1 |
OverDrive Product Record
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/1523-1/{C298AEA7-4CD2-46F7-88A2-4F8DC35F4C72}Img100.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/1523-1/{C298AEA7-4CD2-46F7-88A2-4F8DC35F4C72}Img200.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/1523-1/C29/8AE/A7/{C298AEA7-4CD2-46F7-88A2-4F8DC35F4C72}Img150.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/1523-1/C29/8AE/A7/{C298AEA7-4CD2-46F7-88A2-4F8DC35F4C72}Img400.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- formats
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781101186183
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B0030CVQM6
- name: Kindle Book
- id: ebook-kindle
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781101186183
- name: OverDrive Read
- id: ebook-overdrive
- identifiers:
- otherFormatIdentifiers
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781592406067
- mediaType
- eBook
- primaryCreator
- role: Author
- name: Wendy Burden
- title
- Dead End Gene Pool
- dateAdded
- 2016-06-09T14:24:00-04:00
- contentDetails
- href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=141&titleID=346802
- type: text/html
- account:
- name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
- id: 1151
- sortTitle
- Dead End Gene Pool A Memoir
- crossRefId
- 346802
- subtitle
- A Memoir
- id
- c298aea7-4cd2-46f7-88a2-4f8dc35f4c72
- starRating
- 3.5
OverDrive MetaData
- isPublicDomain
- False
- formats
- fileName: DeadEndGenePool_9781101186183_346802
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 351246
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781101186183
- rights:
- type: Copying
- value: 0
- type: Printing
- value: 0
- type: Lending
- value: 0
- type: ReadAloud
- value: 0
- type: ExpirationRights
- value: 0
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- onSaleDate: 4/1/2010
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-epub-adobe
- url: https://excerpts.cdn.overdrive.com/FormatType-410/1523-1/C29/8AE/A7/DeadEndGenePool9781101186183.epub
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=C298AEA7-4CD2-46F7-88A2-4F8DC35F4C72&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: DeadEndGenePool_346802
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 0
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B0030CVQM6
- name: Kindle Book
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-kindle
- onSaleDate: 4/1/2010
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-epub-adobe
- url: https://excerpts.cdn.overdrive.com/FormatType-410/1523-1/C29/8AE/A7/DeadEndGenePool9781101186183.epub
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=C298AEA7-4CD2-46F7-88A2-4F8DC35F4C72&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: DeadEndGenePool_9781101186183_346802
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 0
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781101186183
- name: OverDrive Read
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-overdrive
- onSaleDate: 4/1/2010
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-epub-adobe
- url: https://excerpts.cdn.overdrive.com/FormatType-410/1523-1/C29/8AE/A7/DeadEndGenePool9781101186183.epub
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=C298AEA7-4CD2-46F7-88A2-4F8DC35F4C72&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- keywords
- value: family
- value: politics
- value: Biography
- value: Friendship
- value: Food
- value: motherhood
- value: Cooking
- value: parenting
- value: book club
- value: fashion
- value: autobiographies
- value: marriage
- value: Autobiography
- value: Memoirs
- value: England
- value: feminism
- value: self help
- value: biographies
- value: History
- value: Essays
- value: Chick Lit
- value: memoir
- value: Social Justice
- value: Sociology
- value: Economics
- value: biographies and memoirs
- value: book club recommendations
- value: history books
- value: political books
- value: books for women
- value: gifts for mom
- value: gifts for women
- value: biographies of famous people
- value: relationship books
- value: gifts for her
- value: sociology books
- value: memoir books
- value: autobiography books
- creators
- role: Author
- fileAs: Burden, Wendy
- name: Wendy Burden
- imprint
- Avery
- publishDate
- 2010-04-01T00:00:00-04:00
- isOwnedByCollections
- True
- title
- Dead End Gene Pool
- fullDescription
- In the tradition of Sean Wilsey's Oh The Glory of It All and Augusten Burrough's Running With Scissors, the great-great-great granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt gives readers a grand tour of the world of wealth and WASPish peculiarity, in her irreverent and darkly humorous memoir.
For generations the Burdens were one of the wealthiest families in New York, thanks to the inherited fortune of Cornelius "The Commodore" Vanderbilt. By 1955, the year of Wendy's birth, the Burden's had become a clan of overfunded, quirky and brainy, steadfastly chauvinistic, and ultimately doomed bluebloods on the verge of financial and moral decline-and were rarely seen not holding a drink. In Dead End Gene Pool, Wendy invites readers to meet her tragically flawed family, including an uncle with a fondness for Hitler, a grandfather who believes you can never have enough household staff, and a remarkably flatulent grandmother.
At the heart of the story is Wendy's glamorous and aloof mother who, after her husband's suicide, travels the world in search of the perfect sea and ski tan, leaving her three children in the care of a chain- smoking Scottish nanny, Fifth Avenue grandparents, and an assorted cast of long-suffering household servants (who Wendy and her brothers love to terrorize). Rife with humor, heartbreak, family intrigue, and booze, Dead End Gene Pool offers a glimpse into the fascinating world of old money and gives truth to an old maxim: The rich are different. - reviews
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
March 15, 2010
In her down-to-earth debut, the great-great-great granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt offers an insider's view of growing up in an old-money family rich with dysfunction.
Burden and her brothers,"for all intents and purposes" parentless, were reared under the less-than-watchful eyes of hired help and her grandparents. The author's jokes about her grandmother's digestive system aren't funny enough to merit their frequency, but it's hard not to sympathize with a narrator whose girlhood was so bereft of discipline and affection. She describes her grandmother as dependent on Percocet and Dubonnet, and both grandparents as heavy drinkers living in their own private reality. After her alcoholic, anorexic mother remarried—to Burden's late-father's best friend, an arms dealer—the unhappy family relocated to Virginia. A move to suburban England followed, where the author's"pretty much friendless" teenage years were peppered with bizarre experiences like her mother giving her birth-control pills at age 14. After her grandfather flew her to Paris on the Concorde to celebrate her 16th birthday,"things in Burdenland spiraled downward faster than you can say amphetamine psychosis," and her life was marked by her grandfather's increased drinking and her little brother's suicidal tendencies, drug addiction and conviction that he was the reincarnation of their father. The author's unwavering determination to view her memories through a humorous lens pays off in her total lack of self-pity, but she occasionally comes across as glib and perhaps unable to look too closely at the root of her family's pain. Consequently, her unique experiences are often merely entertaining instead of affecting.
Engaging but uneven.(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
January 21, 2010
Burden's acknowledgment that she is focusing her memoir on her father's family (Vanderbilt heirs) because "rich people behaving badly are far more interesting than the not so rich behaving badly" reassures us at the outset that this will not be another standard-issue poor-little-rich-girl memoir. After her father's suicide when Burden was six, she spends her childhood largely ignored, shuttling between the home of her self-centered, globetrotting mother and her eccentric Park Avenue grandparents. Burden offers fascinating and voyeuristic insights into a little-known segment of society, the mega-rich American plutocracy in decline. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 12/09.]-Lauren Gilbert, Cold Spring Harbor Lib. & Environmental Ctr., NYCopyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
February 15, 2010
Burden offers up her version of growing up Vanderbilt in this amusing, often-heartbreaking, poor-little-rich-girl tale. As the great-great-great granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, Burden experienced a childhood populated by a cast of suitably wacky WASPs, whose personal and professional ambitions had progressively declined over the course of several overindulged and dangerously inbred generations. Born in 1955, she and her brothers spent their kaleidoscopic childhood raised by rich, eccentric grandparents, Gaga and Popsie, and an extensive surrogate family of servants, while their jet-setting motherstrangely liberated by their fathers suicidegalloped around the globe, gin in hand, desperately seeking her next husband and the perfect tan. This blueblood tale is spun so deftly and so charmingly that it is easy to forget that this it is essentially a sad story of family neglect and degeneration. Burden joins the ranks of such memoirists as Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris, who have successfully mined their dysfunctional childhoods for comedic gold.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)
- popularity
- 43
- links
- self:
- href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/c298aea7-4cd2-46f7-88a2-4f8dc35f4c72/metadata
- type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
- self:
- id
- c298aea7-4cd2-46f7-88a2-4f8dc35f4c72
- starRating
- 3.5
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/1523-1/{C298AEA7-4CD2-46F7-88A2-4F8DC35F4C72}Img100.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/1523-1/{C298AEA7-4CD2-46F7-88A2-4F8DC35F4C72}Img200.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/1523-1/C29/8AE/A7/{C298AEA7-4CD2-46F7-88A2-4F8DC35F4C72}Img150.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/1523-1/C29/8AE/A7/{C298AEA7-4CD2-46F7-88A2-4F8DC35F4C72}Img400.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- isPublicPerformanceAllowed
- False
- languages
- code: en
- name: English
- subjects
- value: Biography & Autobiography
- value: Sociology
- value: Nonfiction
- publishDateText
- 4/1/2010
- otherFormatIdentifiers
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781592405268
- mediaType
- eBook
- shortDescription
- In the tradition of Sean Wilsey's Oh The Glory of It All and Augusten Burrough's Running With Scissors, the great-great-great granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt gives readers a grand tour of the world of wealth and WASPish peculiarity, in her irreverent and darkly humorous memoir.
For generations the Burdens were one of the wealthiest families in New York, thanks to the inherited fortune of Cornelius "The Commodore" Vanderbilt. By 1955, the year of Wendy's birth, the Burden's had become a clan of overfunded, quirky and brainy, steadfastly chauvinistic, and ultimately doomed bluebloods on the verge of financial and moral decline-and were rarely seen not holding a drink. In Dead End Gene Pool, Wendy invites readers to meet her tragically flawed family, including an uncle with a fondness for Hitler, a grandfather who believes you can never have enough household staff, and a remarkably flatulent grandmother.
At the heart of the story is... - sortTitle
- Dead End Gene Pool A Memoir
- crossRefId
- 346802
- subtitle
- A Memoir
- publisher
- Penguin Publishing Group
- bisacCodes
- code: BIO013000
- description: Biography & Autobiography / Rich & Famous
- code: BIO026000
- description: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs
- code: SOC050000
- description: Social Science / Social Classes & Economic Disparity
