The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark, by Meryl Gordon
Why must be reading The Phantom Of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life And Scandalous Death Of Heiress Huguette Clark, By Meryl Gordon Once again, it will rely on how you feel as well as think of it. It is certainly that one of the benefit to take when reading this The Phantom Of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life And Scandalous Death Of Heiress Huguette Clark, By Meryl Gordon; you could take more lessons directly. Also you have actually not undergone it in your life; you could obtain the experience by reviewing The Phantom Of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life And Scandalous Death Of Heiress Huguette Clark, By Meryl Gordon And also now, we will certainly introduce you with the on the internet publication The Phantom Of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life And Scandalous Death Of Heiress Huguette Clark, By Meryl Gordon in this website.
The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark, by Meryl Gordon
PDF Ebook Download Online: The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark, by Meryl Gordon
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 American, 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?
The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark, by Meryl Gordon- Amazon Sales Rank: #479824 in Books
- Brand: Gordon, Meryl
- Published on: 2015-05-12
- Released on: 2015-05-12
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.13" h x 1.13" w x 5.25" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 400 pages
From Booklist Gordon (Mrs. Astor Regrets, 2008) attempts to unlock the secret life of heiress Huguette Clark. When the fabulously wealthy Clark, the daughter of copper magnate William Andrews Clark, died in 2011 at the age of 104, she had not been seen in public for years. Owning and staffing luxury homes and properties on both coasts, she chose to live out her final 20 years in hospitals, despite the fact that she was in relatively good health. Intrigued by what turned a former socialite into a publicity-shy recluse, Gordon digs through journals, correspondence, and memorabilia, peeling away the “poor little rich girl” persona that captured the collective imagination of the public. While it is difficult to fully understand Clark’s unusual lifestyle choices, a well-rounded portrait of an eccentric and talented woman who chose to go her own way eventually emerges. A perfect choice for the Grey Gardens set. --Margaret Flanagan
Review "A thrilling read...Meryl Gordon delivers quite a page-turner for this true-life mystery."―USA Today"Insightful and intriguing, Gordon's book offers a rare glimpse into a privileged world-and twisted personal psychology-beyond imagining."―Kirkus"A perfect choice for the Grey Gardens set."―Booklist"Meticulously researched, Gordon's account catalogues every juicy detail and eccentricity amassed over a century....a rigorous, authoritative account of a 20th century enigma."―Publishers Weekly
About the Author Meryl Gordon is the author of Mrs. Astor Regrets: The Hidden Betrayals of a Family Beyond Reproach. She is an award-winning journalist whose articles have appeared in Vanity Fair, the New York Times, and New York Magazine, and the director of Magazine Writing at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. A native of Rochester, New York, she lives on Manhattan's Upper West Side with her husband, Walter Shapiro.
Where to Download The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark, by Meryl Gordon
Most helpful customer reviews
62 of 65 people found the following review helpful. A dense but interesting read By H. Barlow I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest opinion.When Huguette Clark passed away in 2011, many people were shocked by the story. The last child of William Andrews Clark, once the second richest man in America, had spent the last 20 years of her life living at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City while spending millions to maintain a 42-room Fifth Avenue apartment, a 23-acre Californian estate and a 52-acre estate in New Canaan, Connecticut. Her death also led to a huge legal battle between distant family members, one of her private nurses and the executors of her will.The Phantom of Fifth Avenue spans decades. It was a dense read! Difficult to sit at length and read due to all the information. I had to break it up into smaller chunks and so it took me a lot longer to finish than I anticipated. It is evident how much research and work Meryl Gordon put into writing this biography. In fact her Author’s Notes detail the interviews and exclusive access she was given to Huguette’s estate.Overall I am glad that I read The Phantom of Fifth Avenue it was one of the most interesting biographies I have read to date and it’s pushed Empty Mansions by Bill Dedman (another Huguette Clark biography published last year) further up my wish list.
37 of 37 people found the following review helpful. Poor Little Rich Girl By Dana Keish The Phantom of Fifth AvenueI really enjoy reading about rich people. I have no idea why. It feels like a character flaw, a guilty pleasure. But I embrace it and regardless it as no worse than someone else watching “Dancing with the Stars”. That confession out of the way, I have to say I really enjoyed this book. The story of Huguette (pronounced u-get) Clark, the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in America, is one of those “wow “books about the wealthy. Meaning every time they mention something like the purchase of an antique doll for $100,000, you say “wow-that is a lot of money!” But poor Huguette isn’t a typical rich girl. Married once and divorced within nine months, it is clear that Huguette never found a satisfactory human relationship. She had friends but their means of communication was always via telephone or letters. In the latter years of her incredibly long life (she died at 104), she spent twenty years living in a hospital room, with nothing really wrong with her. She befriended a nurse who ended up with over $30 million in gifts before Huguette died. Huguette was generous but her generosity extended more to people, not organizations. The most fascinating part of the book (and that which brought the most attention to her life) was the fact that she owned one of the largest private apartments in New York City, an amazing estate in Southern California and a beautiful rural retreat in Connecticut, all of which she had not visited in decades. Yet she continued to keep the properties in “ready to live” condition, meaning every year millions of dollars were being spent to keep up homes where no one lived. She also spent hundreds of thousands commissioning artists to create detailed miniature doll houses, which she lost interest in as soon as they were completed. Again, “wow”.Typically, as a rich woman with no direct heirs begins her gradual descent towards death, distant relatives begin to surface. The book describes in detail how the heirs challenged her will and ultimately made several lawyers quite wealthy in the process but really ended up with very little themselves. The most interesting person in the book besides Huguette herself was her Filipino nurse Hadassah Peri. The woman worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for 20 years and during that long time managed to accrue over $30 million in gifts (houses, apartments, cars, cash, etc.). Ms. Peri was definitely no fool but you never have the impression that she coerced Huguette into giving her such extravagant gifts. I think the most telling quote about Ms. Clark is when someone thanked her for a gift, she replied “Don’t thank me-thank my father. I never earned a dime of this money”. Did she do great things with her money? No, not really. Did she enjoy it? I think she did because it allowed her to do exactly what she wanted to do. And really, isn’t that the point of having a lot of money?
26 of 28 people found the following review helpful. Social history that could be a little more personal By J Dot Although we hear a lot about the historical millionaires of America, I don't think the public is aware of many of them. So this book, and its wide reaching examination of the time and world surrounding of Huguette's life, sheds a lot of light on a whole mechanism of America that largely goes undiscussed. I am enthralled by her as a character, so this was all very interesting to me in that it really gave me a lot of context for her story. But I do tend to think you need to have a certain level of fascination with her for it to be a fulfilling read. Otherwise I can see someone getting bogged down by all the extraneous information. As another reviewer stated, I missed the lack of pictures, but it didn't detract in too heavy of a way. Although it does surround all the events of her life, I do think there was some essence of the person of Huguette missing in this book. She is there constantly, of course, but I felt as if I were learning about her as one might learn about a historical figure in a textbook. What makes me think of a biography as spectacular is that I walk away with not only the facts and figures of a life, but having a real sense of who the person was in a personal way. That may have been somewhat lacking in this. Nevertheless, it was still a fascinating read and a real discovery of a whole way of life that I didn't know much about. (Now that I have all the proper historical context, this book honestly makes me hope for someone to do a fictionalized account/based on the life of novel for Huguette that would really bring to life all the documents of a person we have detailed here.)I received an ARC copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.
See all 140 customer reviews... The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark, by Meryl GordonThe Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark, by Meryl Gordon PDF
The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark, by Meryl Gordon iBooks
The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark, by Meryl Gordon ePub
The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark, by Meryl Gordon rtf
The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark, by Meryl Gordon AZW
The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark, by Meryl Gordon Kindle
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar