Big Bosses: A Working Girl's Memoir of Jazz Age America

“No man is a hero to his valet,” said Montaigne, they say—an aphorism that applies especially to American industrialists and the people who work for them. Behind (or under) these “big bosses” are assistants who become privy to their employers’ social lives and personal tics. Althea Altemus worked for a number of these men in the 1910s and ’20s, starting with James Deering of International Harvester, and Big Bosses is her illustrated memoir. A tart and self-aware writer, Altemus has a good s...