Was it the greatest love story of the twentieth century or a bloodless coup? She was the first person to be named Woman of the Year by Time magazine. Yet Wallis Simpson is one of the most reviled women in history. The socialclimbing divorcée was portrayed as a snob and a voluptuary who came close to destroying the British monarchy. But could she have been the pawn of Allied statesmen determined to remove a Nazi sympathizer from power? The memoir, apparently found in her former Paris home, is said to have been written in the Duchess's own hand. Though the Duchess is a highly unreliable narrator, Kate Auspitz, an American academic, is a meticulous historian. She supplies twenty-six pages of footnotes that ground the story firmly in published recollections of the major figures of the time. The plot rests on littleknown historic details that make Wallis's role in the events entirely plausible...