"Bertie and Jeeves are back for another spot of what Jeeves likes to call 'quiescent espionage' ... This time Bertie is required to impersonate a priest and journey to Cambridge, where the Seventh Earl of Sidcup, aspiring fascist Roderick Spode, is wooing undergraduates to his gang of Brown Shorts. Bertie accepts his charge with equanimity, even when required to do some 'nightclimbing' (an undergrad frolic involving skipping to and fro atop the towers...

"When Brewster, my bodyguard, comes to me about a murder of a pugilist--and what's more, says his wife has summoned me--I must hasten to St. Giles to find a killer before Brewster is arrested for the crime. This is made difficult because my wife's late husband's odious cousin has materialized to try to wrest her son into his care. After all, seven-year-old Peter is a viscount, and his cousin wants to get closer to the title. But how close? If Peter's...

A portrait of the Standard Oil heiress and legendary American trendsetter Millicent Rogers. Nobody knew how to live the high life like Millicent Rogers. Born into luxury, she lived in a whirl of beautiful homes, European vacations, exquisite clothing and handsome men. Here, Cherie Burns chronicles Rogers's glittering life from her days as a young girl afflicted with rheumatic fever to her Taos finale. A rebellious icon of the age, she eloped with...

"1915. Set against the backdrop of World War I, Mayfair 100 is the telephone number for a small, specially-formed crime fighting team based in a house in Mayfair. A call comes through to Mayfair 100, where Chief Inspector Peter Beech and his Mayfair-based amateur detectives eagerly await their next case. A society gossip queen has been found hanged in her room in mysterious circumstances. Her enemies are numerous--and her family are convinced she...

In the years after World War II, Georgetown's leafy streets were home to an unlikely group of Cold Warriors: a coterie of affluent, well-educated, and connected civilians who helped steer American strategy from the Marshall Plan through McCarthyism, Watergate, and the endgame of Vietnam. The Georgetown set included Phil and Kay Graham, husband-and-wife publishers of The Washington Post; Joe and Stewart Alsop, odd-couple brothers who were among the...

"After the Communist Revolution, Desmond Shum's grandfather was marked as belonging to a "black category" that included former landlords and rich peasants--meaning the Shums would be stigmatized and impoverished. As Desmond was growing up, he vowed his life would be different. Through hard work and sheer tenacity Shum earned an American college degree and returned to China to establish himself in business. There, he met his future wife, the highly...

How do income, family background, education, attitudes, aspirations, and even appearance mark someone as a member of a particular social class? In travels across the U.S. in interviews with people from diverse socioeconomic groups, this film examines how social class in America has as much influence as race or ethnicity in determining what kind of opportunities a person has in life. Discusses how social class plays a role in the lives of all Americans,...

Commissioned in 1750, the Palazzo Venier was planned as a testimony to the power and wealth of a great Venetian family, but the fortunes of the Venier family waned and the project was abandoned with only one storey complete. Empty, unfinished, and in a gradual state of decay, the building was considered an eyesore. Yet in the early 20th century the Unfinished Palazzo's quality of fairytale abandonment, and its potential for transformation, were to...