Trailblazer. Reactionary. The first female billionaire. The first convicted female stock swindler. Innocent. Guilty. Author. Plagiarizer. Former model. Model felon. Daughter. Wife. Mother. Ice queen. Homemaker. Homewrecker. Elegant simplicity. Status-obsessed.
Everyone thinks they know Martha Stewart. However, if you peel back the curtain in any direction, you realize most reporting on the "domestic goddess" tells the exact same story, just from a pro or con slant, planting a flag on Team Martha or Anti-Martha. In fact, many of us can recite the highly rehearsed Martha narrative chapter and verse.
Yet, in every instance, there exists a black hole in the endless spilled ink on the one-and-only Martha Stewart: her relationship with her daughter Alexis and Alexis’s relationship with master self-promoter and sometime bio-engineer Sam Waksal.
Until you understand the epic love and hate, the undercurrents of unconditional love and resentment that exist between Martha and the quixotic home life she ironically built for herself, the rest of her story, no matter how you spin it, will never truly make sense.
Domestic Anarchy provides the first exhaustive look at the trials, tribulations and the depths of triumph, conflict and ultimate resilience that occurred behind the doors of the house that influenced the look and feel of modern American domesticity like no other. And in doing so, it shows how Martha was able to reach unparalleled heights of fame and fortune and nearly lose it all in one stock trade.
Check out the sample chapters below!
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Nicholas Mennuti is the writer of the espionage thriller Weaponized (Mulholland Books/Little Brown), which had film rights purchased by Universal Pictures and Scott Stuber and Scrap (NeoText). Nicholas's short stories have appeared in AGNI and Conjunctions, and he has written about the intersection of technology and entertainment for the Huffington Post. He is also a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts Dramatic Writing program.
