“What a life! Ellen Browning Scripps made an astonishing amount of money, lived a very long time, and gave millions away. In doing so, she changed the landscape of the far West and earned for herself a pivotal place in American philanthropy. This fine book gives Scripps her due.”—William Deverell, director of the Huntington–USC Institute on California and the West
“[Ellen Browning Scripps’s] progressive legacy undergirds the best of San Diego. This compelling book breaks the glass ceiling in the genre of Southern California biographies.”—Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles
“McClain tells Scripps’s story with verve, suggesting that her example of modest living and exorbitant giving has many lessons for our own gilded age.”—Rebecca Jo Plant, associate professor of history at the University of California, San Diego
“A skillful and loving tribute to Ellen Browning Scripps, one of America’s least-known yet influential philanthropists. This is the inspiring true story of how one person has made a difference in the world.”—William Lawrence, executive director of the San Diego History Center
“McClain’s biography of Ellen Browning Scripps isn’t just about a beloved San Diego philanthropist. . . . [It] is also a history of women’s fight for equality, the rise of mass-market media, Detroit as a booming industrial center, and San Diego as an upstart West Coast center of innovation. Scripps appeared on the cover of Time magazine in the 1920s and she still warrants attention nearly a century later.”—Roger Showley, staff writer for the San Diego Union-Tribune
“McClain’s biography of this remarkable philanthropist and journalist is a gift to all readers.”—Hannah S. Cohen, coauthor of Women Trailblazers of California: Pioneer to the Present
