Download or read book Summary of Bill Dedman Paul Clark Newell Jr s Empty Mansions written by Everest Media, and published by Everest Media LLC. This book was released on 2022-03-23T22:59:00Z with total page 57 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 Huguette and Andrée, the daughters of multimillionaire W. A. Clark, were immigrants to America in 1910. They had sailed from Cherbourg, France, in first-class cabins on the White Star liner Teutonic. They were being educated by private tutors and governesses, with lessons in three languages: English, Spanish, and French. #2 The house was completed in 1911, and was called the most expensive and beautiful private residence in America. It was a fairy-tale castle come to life, with secret entrances, mysterious sources of music, and treasures collected from all over the world. #3 W. A. supervised every detail of the house, from the furniture to the car rotunda. He also bought the stone-dressing plant, marble factory, and woodwork factory. The plans were modified to include an automobile room after Ransom Olds began selling his Curved Dash Oldsmobile in 1901. #4 The Clark house was very expensive to build, and it cost more than two years' profits from the United Verde copper mine in Arizona. W. A. was able to get the courts to lower his property tax bill by valuing the home at only $3. 5 million.
Download or read book Empty Mansions written by Bill Dedman and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Janet Maslin, The New York Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch When Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly sixty years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the nineteenth century with a twenty-first-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades. Though she owned palatial homes in California, New York, and Connecticut, why had she lived for twenty years in a simple hospital room, despite being in excellent health? Why were her valuables being sold off? Was she in control of her fortune, or controlled by those managing her money? Dedman has collaborated with Huguette Clark’s cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., one of the few relatives to have frequent conversations with her. Dedman and Newell tell a fairy tale in reverse: the bright, talented daughter, born into a family of extreme wealth and privilege, who secrets herself away from the outside world. Huguette was the daughter of self-made copper industrialist W. A. Clark, nearly as rich as Rockefeller in his day, a controversial senator, railroad builder, and founder of Las Vegas. She grew up in the largest house in New York City, a remarkable dwelling with 121 rooms for a family of four. She owned paintings by Degas and Renoir, a world-renowned Stradivarius violin, a vast collection of antique dolls. But wanting more than treasures, she devoted her wealth to buying gifts for friends and strangers alike, to quietly pursuing her own work as an artist, and to guarding the privacy she valued above all else. The Clark family story spans nearly all of American history in three generations, from a log cabin in Pennsylvania to mining camps in the Montana gold rush, from backdoor politics in Washington to a distress call from an elegant Fifth Avenue apartment. The same Huguette who was touched by the terror attacks of 9/11 held a ticket nine decades earlier for a first-class stateroom on the second voyage of the Titanic. Empty Mansions reveals a complex portrait of the mysterious Huguette and her intimate circle. We meet her extravagant father, her publicity-shy mother, her star-crossed sister, her French boyfriend, her nurse who received more than $30 million in gifts, and the relatives fighting to inherit Huguette’s copper fortune. Richly illustrated with more than seventy photographs, Empty Mansions is an enthralling story of an eccentric of the highest order, a last jewel of the Gilded Age who lived life on her own terms. Praise for Empty Mansions “An amazing story of profligate wealth . . . an outsized tale of rags-to-riches prosperity.”—The New York Times “An evocative and rollicking read, part social history, part hothouse mystery, part grand guignol.”—The Daily Beast “Fascinating . . . [a] haunting true-life tale.”—People “One of those incredible stories that you didn’t even know existed. It filled a void.”—Jon Stewart, The Daily Show “Thrilling . . . deliciously scandalous.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Download or read book The Phantom of Fifth Avenue written by Meryl Gordon and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From New York Times bestselling author Meryl Gordon, the definitive biography of Huguette Clark, who went from being one of the wealthiest and most famous Jazz Age socialites to spending the last twenty years of her life hiding out in hospitals. Born in 1906, Huguette Clark grew up in her family's 121-room Beaux Arts mansion in New York and was one of the leading celebrities of her day. Her father William Andrews Clark, was a copper magnate, the second richest man in America, and not above bribing his way into the Senate. Huguette attended the coronation of King George V. And at twenty-two with a personal fortune of $50 million to her name, she married a Princeton man and childhood friend William MacDonald Gower. Two-years later the couple divorced. After a series of failed romances, Huguette began to withdraw from society--first living with her mother in a kind of Grey Gardens isolation then as a modern-day Miss Havisham, spending her days in a vast apartment overlooking Central Park, eating crackers and watching The Flintstones with only servants for company. All her money and all her real estate could not protect her in her later life from being manipulated by shady hangers-on and hospitals that were only too happy to admit (and bill) a healthy woman. But what happened to Huguette that turned a vivacious, young socialite into a recluse? And what was her life like inside that gilded, copper cage?
Download or read book Casa Loma written by Freeman, Bill and published by James Lorimer & Company. This book was released on 2012-04-16 with total page 75 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fascinating story of industrialist Sir Henry Pellatt and his lavish Toronto home
Download or read book The Summer I Met Jack written by Michelle Gable and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2018-05-29 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Based on the real-life story of Alicia Corning Clark"--Jacket.
Download or read book Dickens s Women written by Anne Isba and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-10-13 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the bicentenary of his birth, this short account of the emotional life of Charles Dickens examines his relationships with some of the women to whom he was closest. They include the mother who failed to recognise his early promise; the young woman who spurned him before he was famous; the wife he cast aside in middle age; the benefactress for whom he managed a house for 'fallen women'; and the actress, less than half his age, with whom he spent his final years. Each woman casts light on a different aspect of Dickens's personality. But they were united by a common theme: whatever they gave him, it was rarely enough to satisfy Dickens's sense of entitlement.
Download or read book Huguette s Last Wish written by Beth Leeds and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-05-04 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Huguette Marcelle Clark was America's richest little girl. She was born in Paris, France, in 1906 to one of the richest men in the world, William Andrew Clark (think Clark County, Nevada aka Las Vegas). Aside from building the Southern Pacific Railroad with his own cash from his copper mines and establishing the town of Las Vegas, Mr. Clark built many mansions. Huguette and her mother loved Santa Barbara, California, and Bellosguardo was their ocean front estate. When her mother died in 1964, Huguette became a recluse in a hospital room with her precious dolls, in New York City.
Download or read book Twilight Man written by Liz Brown and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Twilight Man is biography, romance, and nonfiction mystery, carrying with it the bite of fiction." -- Los Angeles Review of Books “In Twilight Man, Liz Brown uncovers a noir fairytale, a new glimpse into the opulent Gilded Age empire of the Clark family.” —Bill Dedman, co-author of The New York Times bestseller Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune The unbelievable true story of Harrison Post--the enigmatic lover of one of the richest men in 1920s Hollywood--and the battle for a family fortune. In the booming 1920s, William Andrews Clark Jr. was one of the richest, most respected men in Los Angeles. The son of the mining tycoon known as "The Copper King of Montana," Clark launched the Los Angeles Philharmonic and helped create the Hollywood Bowl. He was also a man with secrets, including a lover named Harrison Post. A former salesclerk, Post enjoyed a lavish existence among Hollywood elites, but the men's money--and their homosexuality--made them targets, for the district attorney, their employees and, in Post's case, his own family. When Clark died suddenly, Harrison Post inherited a substantial fortune--and a wealth of trouble. From Prohibition-era Hollywood to Nazi prison camps to Mexico City nightclubs, Twilight Man tells the story of an illicit love and the battle over a family estate that would destroy one man's life. Harrison Post was forgotten for decades, but after a chance encounter with his portrait, Liz Brown, Clark's great-grandniece, set out to learn his story. Twilight Man is more than just a biography. It is an exploration of how families shape their own legacies, and the lengths they will go in order to do so.
Download or read book Whispering City written by R. J. B. Bosworth and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud claimed that Rome must be comprehended as "not a human dwelling place but a mental entity," in which the palaces of the Caesars still stand alongside modern apartment buildings in layers of brick, mortar, and memory. "The observer would need merely to shift the focus of his eyes, perhaps, or change his position, in order to call up a view of either the one or the other." In this one-of-a-kind book, historian Richard Bosworth accepts Freud's challenge, drawing upon his expertise in Italian pasts to explore the many layers of history found within the Eternal City. Often beginning his analysis with sites and monuments that can still be found in contemporary Rome, Bosworth expands his scope to review how political groups of different eras—the Catholic Church, makers of the Italian nation, Fascists, and "ordinary" Romans (be they citizens, immigrants, or tourists)—read meaning into the city around them. Weaving in the city's quintessential figures (Garibaldi, Pius XII, Mussolini, and Berlusconi) and architectural icons (the Vatican, St. Peter's Basilica, the Victor Emmanuel Monument, and EUR) with those forgotten or unknown, Bosworth explores the many histories that whisper their rival and competing messages and seek to impose their truth upon the passing crowds. But as this delightful study will reveal, Rome, that magisterial palimpsest, has never accepted a single reading of its historic meaning.
Download or read book Minnesota s Notorious Nellie King written by Jerry Kuntz and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This true crime biography chronicles the misadventures of a lady outlaw who caused havoc across the late-19th century northern plains. The American historian Frederick Jackson Turner famously declared the 1890s to be the close of the American Frontier. But from 1887 to 1893, a young woman known as Nellie King was far from being tamed. King scandalized the residents of the Dakotas, Minnesota and northern Wisconsin with her fetching appearance, eccentric behavior, and criminal misdeeds. In Minnesota’s Notorious Nellie King, biographer Jerry Kuntz pieces together King’s legendary life—as well as the clues to her true identity. King employed more than a dozen aliases throughout her career as a fake detective, horse thief, laudanum fiend, and general disturber of the peace across the northern plains. She attracted sensational headlines, love-struck suitors, and stray revolver shots with equal abandon; her story’s Dickensian cast of characters included a hapless counterfeiter, a dashing physician, a battle-hardened magician, and a determined mother.
Download or read book Cleopatra s Riches written by Martha Adams and published by Waterside Productions. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are you ready to change the conversation about money and finances? Most people view the money conversation as negative, full of confusion, uncertainty, guilt or even shame. And these hidden negative emotions can lead to avoidance. This book is going to change everything! You're going to want to talk about money - and even more importantly, you're going to feel good about joining the conversation! Where does the change come from? It starts with focusing on helping the essential person: you. Your feelings and beliefs on money were formed through your money story that started with the riches of your origins, which is why we base our conversation in the setting of mine - Ancient Egypt. In this book, you're given the tools to constructively work though past emotions and effectively release the negativity that's holding you back from achieving the financial success that you want, in the way you want. Through a customized combination of self-development techniques with tangible financial advice, you will discover what true financial empowerment means. Taking real control of your money story is rooted in your emotional connection to the conversation. Change the feeling, change the belief, change the result.
Download or read book Daring Darleen Queen of the Screen written by Anne Nesbet and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a publicity stunt goes terribly wrong, twelve-year-old Darleen Darling, star of the silent film era, must defeat villains both on screen and off in this edge-of-your-seat adventure. Lights! Camera! Kidnapping? It’s 1914, and Darleen Darling’s film adventures collide with reality when a fake kidnapping set up by her studio becomes all too real. Suddenly Darleen finds herself in the hands of dastardly criminals who have just nabbed Miss Victorine Berryman, the poor-little-rich-girl heiress of one of America’s largest fortunes. Soon real life starts to seem like a bona fide adventure serial, complete with dramatic escapes, murderous plots, and a runaway air balloon. Will Darleen and Victorine be able to engineer their own happily-ever-after, or will the villains be victorious?
Download or read book The Girl With The Widow s Peak written by Ursula d’Abo and published by Loose Chippings. This book was released on 2014-06-30 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reflections on thought-provoking quotations to stimulate and guide those who are interested by life's challenges. Living life can be a challenge. Which path should I follow? How should I respond? What should I do? Many similar questions face us almost daily, whether it is to do with our job, our relationships or life itself. In 'Walk With The Wise' Tim Binder and Ron Owen take thought-provoking quotations and offer their own ideas to stimulate and guide those who wish to understand life's challenges. Tim and Ron are used to helping people to make decisions regarding their lives; they have been mentors and life coaches over many years. They do not dish out answers, rather they assist people to ask themselves relevant questions, perhaps see life a little differently and find the answers which are right for them.
Download or read book The Ghost of the Cuban Queen Bordello written by Peggy Hicks and published by Peggy Hicks. This book was released on 2011 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The account begins as a true ghost story based on actual events. After an unsettling, modern day, ghostly encounter at a crumbling 1920's bordello in Jerome, Arizona, the author sets out on a quest and uncovers some deplorable secrets regarding the attractive, but devious Madam that once resided there. This curvaceous Madam began her career in the early 1900's in the red light district of Storyville in New Orleans. It was there where she met and eventually married the famous Jelly Roll Morton. She frequently changed her name and even her race in order to accommodate g=her ever-changing circumstances. She bleached her skin and straighten her hair as if to deny her African heritage ... or was it just a trick of her trade? Constantly on the move, she operated the Arcade Saloon in the pioneer town of Las Vegas, Nevada, and then a jazz club in San Francisco. Moving on to the rich mining town of Jerome, Arizona, she ran a "house of pleasure" called the Cuban Queen Bordello. Much went on behind her closed doors, where gambling, prostitution, and bootlegged whiskey were always on the menu. Late one night in 1927, one of her working girls was murdered in her own bed. This cunning madam, along with her handsome accomplice, kidnapped the dead girl's baby boy and slipped out of town never to be heard from again.... until now."--Back cover.
Download or read book The Last Castle written by Denise Kiernan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller with an "engaging narrative and array of detail” (The Wall Street Journal), the “intimate and sweeping” (Raleigh News & Observer) untold, true story behind the Biltmore Estate—the largest, grandest private residence in North America, which has seen more than 120 years of history pass by its front door. The story of Biltmore spans World Wars, the Jazz Age, the Depression, and generations of the famous Vanderbilt family, and features a captivating cast of real-life characters including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, Teddy Roosevelt, John Singer Sargent, James Whistler, Henry James, and Edith Wharton. Orphaned at a young age, Edith Stuyvesant Dresser claimed lineage from one of New York’s best known families. She grew up in Newport and Paris, and her engagement and marriage to George Vanderbilt was one of the most watched events of Gilded Age society. But none of this prepared her to be mistress of Biltmore House. Before their marriage, the wealthy and bookish Vanderbilt had dedicated his life to creating a spectacular European-style estate on 125,000 acres of North Carolina wilderness. He summoned the famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted to tame the grounds, collaborated with celebrated architect Richard Morris Hunt to build a 175,000-square-foot chateau, filled it with priceless art and antiques, and erected a charming village beyond the gates. Newlywed Edith was now mistress of an estate nearly three times the size of Washington, DC and benefactress of the village and surrounding rural area. When fortunes shifted and changing times threatened her family, her home, and her community, it was up to Edith to save Biltmore—and secure the future of the region and her husband’s legacy. This is the fascinating, “soaring and gorgeous” (Karen Abbott) story of how the largest house in America flourished, faltered, and ultimately endured to this day.
Download or read book Lost and Found in Spain written by Susan Lewis Solomont and published by . This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "When her husband was appointed by President Barack Obama to be U.S. Ambassador to Spain and Andorra, Susan Solomont uprooted herself. She left her career, her friends and family, and a life she loved to join her husband for a three-and-a-half year tour overseas. In a story that is part memoir and part travelogue, Solomont recounts a time of self-discovery as she navigates a new life in a foreign country. She learns the rules of a diplomatic household; feeds her culinary curiosity with the help of some of Spain's greatest chefs; finds her place in the Madrid Jewish community; and discovers her own voice as she creates new meaning in her role as a spouse, a community member, and a twenty-first century woman. Lost and found in Spain is an insider's account of everyday life in an American embassy that reminds us we are all looking for our place in the world, whether on the international stage or in our own hearts."--Page 4 of cover.
Download or read book The Shadow Queen written by Sandra Gulland and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the beloved Josephine B. Trilogy, comes a spellbinding novel inspired by the true story of a young woman who rises from poverty to become confidante to the most powerful, provocative and dangerous woman in the 17th century French court: the mistress of the charismatic Sun King. 1660, Paris Claudette’s life is like an ever-revolving stage set. From an impoverished childhood wandering the French countryside with her family’s acting troupe, Claudette finally witnesses her mother's astonishing rise to stardom in Parisian theaters. Working with playwrights Corneille, Molière and Racine, Claudette’s life is culturally rich, but like all in the theatrical world at the time, she's socially scorned. A series of chance encounters gradually pull Claudette into the alluring orbit of Athénaïs de Montespan, mistress to Louis XIV and reigning "Shadow Queen." Needing someone to safeguard her secrets, Athénaïs offers to hire Claudette as her personal attendant. Enticed by the promise of riches and respectability, Claudette leaves the world of the theater only to find that court is very much like a stage, with outward shows of loyalty masking more devious intentions. This parallel is not lost on Athénaïs, who fears political enemies are plotting her ruin as young courtesans angle to take the coveted spot in the king's bed. Indeed, Claudette's "reputable" new position is marked by spying, illicit trysts and titanic power struggles. As Athénaïs, becomes ever more desperate to hold onto the King's favor, innocent love charms move into the realm of deadly Black Magic, and Claudette is forced to consider a move that will put her own life—and the family she loves so dearly—at risk. Set against the gilded opulence of a newly-constructed Versailles and the War of Theaters, THE SHADOW QUEEN is a seductive, gripping novel about the lure of wealth, the illusion of power, and the increasingly uneasy relationship between two strong-willed women whose actions could shape the future of France.
