The Memory of All That

Viac o knihe

The Memory of All That is Katharine Weber’s memoir exploring her extraordinary family. Her grandmother, Kay Swift, was the first woman to compose a hit Broadway score and had a ten-year romance with George Gershwin, which began during her marriage to banker James Paul Warburg. Weber paints an intimate portrait of the Warburg family, highlighting her great-great-uncle, art historian Aby Warburg, whose madness influenced modern iconography theories, and her great-grandfather, Paul M. Warburg, a key architect of the Federal Reserve System whose warnings about the 1929 stock-market crash went unheeded. She sheds light on her grandmother’s life and relationships, while also examining psychoanalyst Gregory Zilboorg's impact on their history. The Warburgs have been both celebrated and vilified, facing conspiracy theories labeling Paul as a leader of an "international Jewish banking conspiracy." Weber reflects on her mother, Andrea Swift Warburg, and her marriage to Sidney Kaufman, which she believes was influenced by Gershwin's legacy. Her father, a notorious womanizer and filmmaker, was under FBI surveillance for decades, with even her birth noted in a memo to J. Edgar Hoover. Colorful and insightful, this memoir offers a captivating look at a highly influential and eccentric family, revealing how their layered stories have shaped one of our most gifted writers.