Primates of Park Avenue (Reprint) (Paperback) by Wednesday Martin P.H.D.

About the Book

"Like an urban Dian Fossey, Wednesday Martin decodes the primate social behaviors of Upper East Side mothers in a brilliantly original and witty memoir about her adventures assimilating into that most secretive and elite tribe. After marrying a man from the Upper East Side and moving to the neighborhood, Wednesday Martin struggled to fit in. Drawing on her background in anthropology and primatology, she tried looking at her new world through that lens, and suddenly things fell into place. She understood the other mothers' snobbiness at school drop-off when she compared them to olive baboons. Her obsessional quest for a Hermes Birkin handbag made sense when she realized other females wielded them to establish dominance in their troop. And so she analyzed tribal migration patterns; display rituals; physical adornment, mutilation, and mating practices; extra-pair copulation; and more. Her conclusions are smart, thought-provoking, and hilariously unexpected. Every city has its Upper East Side, and in Wednesday's memoir, readers everywhere will recognize the strange cultural codes of powerful social hierarchies and the compelling desire to climb them. They will also see that Upper East Side mothers want the same things for their children that all mothers want--safety, happiness, and success--and not even sky-high penthouses and chauffeured SUVs can protect this ecologically released tribe from the universal experiences of anxiety and loss. When Wednesday's life turns upside down, she learns how deep the bonds of female friendship really are. Intelligent, funny, and heartfelt, Primates of Park Avenue lifts a veil on a secret, elite world within a world--the exotic, fascinating, and strangely familiar culture of privileged Manhattan motherhood"--

Book Synopsis

An instant #1 New York Times bestseller, Primates of Park Avenue is an "amusing, perceptive and...deliciously evil" (The New York Times Book Review) memoir of the most secretive and elite tribe--Manhattan's Upper East Side mothers.

When Wednesday Martin first arrives on New York City's Upper East Side, she's clueless about the right addresses, the right wardrobe, and the right schools, and she's taken aback by the glamorous, sharp-elbowed mommies around her. She feels hazed and unwelcome until she begins to look at her new niche through the lens of her academic background in anthropology. As she analyzes the tribe's mating and migration patterns, childrearing practices, fetish objects, physical adornment practices, magical purifying rituals, bonding rites, and odd realities like sex segregation, she finds it easier to fit in and even enjoy her new life. Then one day, Wednesday's world is turned upside down, and she finds out there's much more to the women who she's secretly been calling Manhattan Geishas.

"Think Gossip Girl, but with a sociological study of the parents" (InStyle.com), Wednesday's memoir is absolutely "eye-popping" (People). Primates of Park Avenue lifts a veil on a secret, elite world within a world--the strange, exotic, and utterly foreign and fascinating life of privileged Manhattan motherhood.

Review Quotes

I absolutely loved this memoir and could not put it down! It's incredibly clever; Martin uses anthropology to analyze Upper East mothers, and it's astonishingly illuminating. Somehow, Martin manages to be caustically perceptive but also generous, funny, moving, and erudite all at the same time. This is one of the most fascinating books I've read in a long time.--Amy Chua, Yale Law Professor and author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and The Triple Package

Amusing...incisive...a wryly entertaining guide to this rarefied subculture.-- "The Economist"

Any population is fair game for anthropological research, so why not the super-rich, super-thin, and oh-so-well-dressed mothers of New York's Upper East Side?... Illuminating and fun.-- "BookPage"

Think privileged NYC wives are another species? Martin goes undercover in this dishy memoir and reminds us that we all have something in common.-- "Glamour"