#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)"
"
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