Reviews
“Treacherous Beauty is history with all the sex, suspense, knavery, and bravery of a spy thriller.”
–Washington Independent Review of Books
“[The authors] know their Benedict Arnold. But their real service is in offering a comprehensive portrait of another player in the plot, Peggy Shippen. The beautiful, intelligent Mrs. Benedict Arnold has been a “mere footnote,” observe the authors. But footnotes often make for the most interesting of tales, and Peggy Shippen Arnold doesn’t disappoint… scrupulously researched, fascinating…”
– Chicago Tribune
“Treacherous Beauty offers a vivid, nuanced portrait of a divided country in the bloody throes of transformation.”
– American History magazine, October 2012
“Treacherous Beauty is history at its most engaging: familiar in its context; but surprising, even enlightening in its detail. It is, in fact, surprising that those who care about America’s past have not been enlightened about Peggy Shippen before.”
–Eric Burns, author of Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism.
“At last, a serious work on one of the most fascinating and little known women in American history! Peggy Shippen was so much more that the wife of the famous traitor – she was a woman with a foot in two worlds, an American whose life serves as a perfect illustration of the wild complexities of the Revolution. With Treacherous Beauty Mark Jacob and Stephen H. Case have done ample justice to the life and times of their subject with this fair-minded, well researched and finely crafted biography, a gift to students of the Revolution eager to dig beneath the well-worn surface of that conflict’s history.”
–James L. Nelson, author of Benedict Arnold’s Navy
“Treacherous Beauty fills an important gap in American history with its in-depth narrative of the treason of Benedict Arnold and his beautiful young wife Peggy. This excellent book is also the story of a star-crossed love affair beyond anything that a playwright could imagine.”
–Arthur S. Lefkowitz, author of George Washington’s Indispensable Men
“…[The authors] succeed in capturing the period atmosphere as they adroitly interweave military maneuvers with the shadowy machinations. The book also benefits from rarely studied correspondence by Peggy to her son Edward provided by her descendant Hugh Arnold.”
– Publishers Weekly
