An entertaining, gossipy look at the phenomenon of American heiresses marrying titled British aristocrats, which took place from the 1870s to the early 1900s. Shut out by the old money society of New York epitomized by Caroline Astor's "400," these nouveau riche families sought out social acceptability across the Atlantic instead. They launched their pert, pretty, privileged daughters into a hidebound British society which at first balked at the girls as little more than savages, but soon came to see that the girls' vast fortunes were just what their crumbling estates needed.

The book moves more or less chronologically, showing the phases of this phenomenon, from the "Buccaneers" like Jennie Jerome (mother of Winston Churchill) and Consuelo Yznaga, who led the charge into aristocratic marriages, to the Self-Made Girls like midwestern beauty Jeannie Chamberlain, to the later American Aristocrats, who often had spent more time in England than in America and saw themselves as every bit as worthy as the British aristocrats they married. Threaded through all these eras of "dollar princesses" is the fascination and support of Prince Albert, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), who admired and accepted the American arrivistes, giving them social acceptability and even encouraging matches between the girls and various titled men. The book also delves into lots of fascinating detail about the fashions, entertainments, manners, morals, and etiquette of both the British ruling families and the American families determined to crack into their insular institution. Worth gowns by the dozen, luxurious "cottages" in Newport, portraits done by John Singer Sargent, house parties with Prince Albert -- the book paints a vivid picture of the world in which these women lived.

A fascinating look at what was truly a fairly tawdry trend of the daughters of American robber barons and industrialists being groomed and brought up to be more or less sold off to impecunious dukes, earls, marquesses, and barons. A short-lived but intriguing period of time, and one that had a huge impact on the British aristocracy which is still felt today. Without the marriage of heiress Frances Work to the Baron Fermoy, after all, there would have been no Princess Diana, and no Princes William or George -- future kings, both.