The Baroness

January 21, 2013
This charming biography of the eccentric and romantically adventurous Baroness Panonica de Koenigswarter (1913–1988) is written by her great-niece. Perhaps Rothschild could be accused of obsession, having previously produced both a radio program and a documentary feature film about the baroness, but the reader is immediately engaged. Rothschild vividly describes the world of wealth and privilege in which Panonica (known as Nica) was raised in the early decades of the 20th century, a lonely youngest daughter of a mentally unstable and later suicidal father and a Hungarian beauty of a mother. Rothschild wants to understand how and why Nica (who became a baroness when she married Baron Jules de Koenigswarter) turned her back on her family and her husband and fled deep into the New York jazz scene of the late 1940s. A benefactor to countless musicians, she became the subject of tabloid gossip when Charlie Parker died in her suite at the elite Stamford Hotel. Much of the vitality of her New York life hinges on her long relationship with Thelonious Monk, who wrote songs for her and for whom she once took the fall in a drug bust. Nica is an irresistible combination of British eccentricity and Rothschild sophistication. Readers will enjoy this intimate story of a lifetime of rule breaking, told with remarkable detail, tenderness, and true empathy. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, the Wylie Agency.

January 15, 2013
The fascinating story of a member of Europe's banking aristocracy who spent the second half of her life swinging with New York's jazz aristocracy. British filmmaker Hannah Rothschild's print debut is based on a BBC documentary she made about her great-aunt Nica (1913-1988). The book is an engaging mixture of well-researched biography and personal reminiscences about her formidable relatives. A cogent account of the Rothschilds' rise from Frankfurt's bleak Jewish ghetto to the international capitals of finance makes palpable the world of privileged confinement Nica inhabited. Born into the English branch, Nica thought she could escape by marrying a glamorous French executive, but he proved as stuffy as her family. After giving birth to five children and narrowly escaping from France during the Nazi occupation, she was a restless diplomat's wife on her way back to his posting in Mexico when she first heard the music of Thelonious Monk. "I never went home," she later told her great-niece. She checked into New York's Stanhope Hotel and was soon driving Monk and other then-unappreciated pioneers of the bebop revolution to gigs in her Rolls Royce. Hannah paints the attachment to Monk (who was married) as devoted friendship rather than an affair, though she also quotes scornful observers who viewed Nica as a rich groupie, an opinion reinforced in 1955 when Charlie Parker died of an overdose in her apartment. Hannah's account of Nica's relationships with these often troubled and drug-addicted musicians, which included taking the rap for Monk when Delaware police pulled them over in 1958 and found marijuana in her car, shows her to be a stalwart champion of their music and their civil rights. Hard-drinking, night-clubbing Nica comes across as an eccentric free spirit to equal the artists she idolized. An affectionate biography of a woman who in her late 30s finally saw the life she wanted and grabbed it.

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February 15, 2013
Shake the storied Rothschild family tree and you're bound to let loose more than a few eccentrics, perhaps none more so than the enigmatic Pannonica Rothschild, who later, through marriage, became Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter. Sifting through the family history for information about her infamous yet elusive great-aunt Nica, the author remained undaunted as she was initially stonewalled by tight-lipped relatives. Digging more aggressively over the course of 25 years, she uncovered the intriguing story of a not-so-classic poor little rich girl who fell in love with a musical revolution and ditched her husband and five children for the sake of jazz. Inspired by Thelonious Monk's seminal recording 'Round Midnight, she fled her French chteau in 1951, setting up shop in New York, where she was a fixture on the jazz scene until her death, in 1988. Nicknamed the Baroness of Jazz, she befriended and acted as patroness to a score of musical giants, including Monk and Charlie Parker. Rothschild has firmly fleshed out a fascinating footnote to musical history.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)