Celebrities and Less Famed Americans Married to Women of Bohemian and Czech Ancestry and their Progeny

About the Book

This is not an ordinary book. Whereas the American ethnic literature usually relates to immigrants and their accomplishments, this monograph’s focus is on Americans who married them, specifically American men whose spouses were women with Czech or Bohemian roots. Images on the cover: John Jay (1745-1829), b. New York, NY, was a lawyer, American statesman, a patriot, diplomat, and one of Founding Fathers of the US, and 2nd Governor of New York and the first Chief Justice of the United States (1789–1795) who directed U.S. foreign policy for much of the 1780s. Sarah Van Brugh Livingston, whom he married, was a highly educated American socialite who was a strong support to her husband, astutely networking with the movers and shakers of the time. She radiated such beauty and charm that she was mistaken for Marie Antoinette. Sarah was of Bohemian ancestry, having descended from Frederick Philipse.

About the Author

Míla Rechcigl, as he likes to be called, is a versatile person with many talents, a man of science and organization professionally, and Renaissance man by breadth of his knowledge and scholarly interests. Born in Czechoslovakia to a son of the youngest member of the Czechoslovak Parliament, he spent the War years under Nazi occupation and after the Communist’s coup d’état escaped to the West and immigrated to the US. He received training as biochemist at Cornell University and later served as a research biochemist at NIH. Following his additional training he became a science administrator, first at the DHEW and later at US Department of State and AID. Apart from his scientific and science administrative pursuits, he served as an editor of several scientific series and authored more than thirty books and handbooks. Beyond that, he is considered an authority on immigration history, on which subject he had written extensively. He was also one of the founders of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) and for many years served as its President.