Miss Betsey: A Memoir of Marriage

“Gene Genovese’s tribute to his late wife moved me deeply not only because of the touching beauty of his prose but also because he and Betsey are figures who shaped my life. It is impossible for me to read this work without recalling my first meeting with this remarkable couple many decades ago and about how deeply they impressed me even then. Gene’s recollections about Betsey ring true even for someone like me, who was merely her distant admirer. Like her husband, she had many such devotees, all of whom she fully deserved.”—Paul Gottfried, Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College and author
“Eugene Genovese has written a beautiful memoir of the life of his late wife Betsey Fox-Genovese and has given a compelling portrait of the strong tie of marriage between two renowned historians—the son of a Sicilian American worker and the daughter of a university professor from an old American family.  We see Betsey as a young Marxist professor demanding fair treatment for striking service workers at her university and Betsey as a mature and deeply spiritual Catholic, assisting the priest in administering Communion.   We see her as an influential scholar, a contentious political writer, and devoted teacher, reading a student's doctoral dissertation in the pain of her last days.  Passionate, partisan, humorous, and self-mocking, Eugene Genovese's book is a paean of love for a remarkable woman.”—Natalie Zemon Davis, author of Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives
 “In this beautifully written memoir of a marriage, Eugene Genovese captures his beloved wife for all those who knew her and, as well, those who did not but here discover her for the first time. We see the devoted and witty wife; the brilliant scholar; the dedicated teacher; and, finally, the unbeliever whose spiritual journey led her home to Catholicism. The seriousness of that journey is a wonder to behold as one contrasts it to the superficial features of our age.”—Jean Bethke Elshtain, author of Sovereignty: God, State, and Self
“Gene Genovese's beautiful evocation of life with his beloved Betsey is the quintessential labor of love. In it and through it, we see what the marriage of true minds looks like. For them, it meant sharing extraordinary joys and griefs, amused forbearance in small things and passionate unity in large ones, always sustained by the sheer irreplaceable pleasure of one another's conversation and company. Their improbable tale will make you laugh and weep, often at the same time. But above all it will remind you that an intense and exhilarating love that lasts a lifetime, and more, is no sentimental myth.”—Wilfred McClay, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga