Time Travel & Bohemian Adventures


Aimée Crocker’s Harem


Amy Crocker wrote in her autobiography about how she was very young “when the finger of the East reached across the Pacific and touched me.” She was drawn to all things Asian yet the swashbuckling Californienne was also undoubtedly a Francophile. In the City of Light, in the years before the war, she began cultivating a new identity as a mystic princess in glamorous Parisian attire.

Recommended Reading


Aimée Crocker Queen of Bohemia by Kevin Taylor
Aimée Crocker, Queen of Bohemia by Kevin Taylor

Aimée Crocker, Queen of Bohemia, chronicles the life and times, adventures and the close circle of heiress Aimée Crocker, who boldly transcended class, culture and gender roles and made headlines from the 1880s to the 1940s. She was known for her cultural exploration of the Far East, for her extravagant parties in San Francisco, New York and Paris, and for her collections of husbands and lovers, adopted children, Buddhas, pearls, tattoos and snakes. While the American

And I'd Do It Again Bookcover
And I’d Do It Again by Aimée Crocker, The Princess Galitzine

Today’s heiresses are boring: their idea of adventure is trying to sip a green juice while their lips are still numb from cosmetic surgery. (Oops—dribbled a bit on that Balmain dress!) Aimée Crocker, a San Francisco railroad heiress born in 1864, used her wealth to scandalize prudes and scald the bourgeois palate. Her 1936 memoir, And I’d Do It Again, describes her saturnalian adventures around the globe. Now it’s been reissued, and Libby Purves read it with relish:

EDITOR’S PICK


Stargazing with Einstein

In the aftermath of the global “war to end all wars.” the splashy New York Times headline, “Lights All Askew in the Heavens…Einstein Theory Triumphs” captured the attention and imagination of the public. Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity had been verified