(Bachin, Robin F.) Robin F. Bachin is the Charlton W. Tebeau Associate Professor of History and assistant provost for civic and community engagement at the University of Miami. Bachin is the editor of Big Bosses: A Working Girl’s Memoir of Jazz Age America (University of Chicago Press), the memoir of Althea McDowell Altemus. Beginning with her employment as a private secretary to bachelor-playboy James Deering, Altemus vividly recounts her life as a secretary for prominent employers in Chicago, Miami, and New York during the late teens and 1920s. Alongside her, we rub elbows with movie stars, artists, and high-profile businessmen, and experience lavish estate parties that routinely defied the laws of Prohibition. Big Bosses gives us a one-of-a-kind peek inside the excitement and challenges of being a woman and a professional during the roaring ‘20s.
