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Empty mansions: the mysterious life of Huguette Clark and the spending of a great American fortune

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Pub. Date:
2013
Language:
English
Description
#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 Prizewinning 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.
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ISBN:
9780345534521
9780345534538
9780804149563
9780345545565
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Grouping Information

Grouped Work ID8886eaf0-c6f7-7ac0-124e-7f8e0905c026
Grouping Titleempty mansions the mysterious life of huguette clark and the spending of a great american fortune
Grouping Authorbill dedman
Grouping Categorybook
Grouping LanguageEnglish (eng)
Last Grouping Update2024-03-28 14:42:27PM
Last Indexed2024-03-28 14:43:58PM

Solr Fields

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auth_author2
Newell, Paul Clark, Jr
author
Dedman, Bill
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Dedman, Bill
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display_description
#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 Prizewinning 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.
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eAudiobook
eBook
format_category_catalog
Audio Books
Books
eBook
id
8886eaf0-c6f7-7ac0-124e-7f8e0905c026
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itype_catalog
Adult Book Non-Fiction
Adult Fiction
last_indexed
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lexile_score
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owning_library_catalog
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owning_location_catalog
Arden-Dimick
Carmichael
Fair Oaks
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Pocket-Greenhaven
primary_isbn
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publishDate
2013
publisher
Ballantine Books
Books on Tape
Random House Publishing Group
recordtype
grouped_work
subject_facet
Clark, Huguette, -- 1906-2011
Clark, Huguette, -- 1906-2011 -- Family
Clark, Huguette, -- 1906-2011 -- Homes and haunts -- United States
Clark, William Andrews, -- 1839-1925 -- Family
Collectors and collecting -- United States -- Biography
Eccentrics and eccentricities -- United States -- Biography
Heiresses -- United States -- Biography
Mansions -- United States -- History
Recluses -- United States -- Biography
title_display
Empty mansions : the mysterious life of Huguette Clark and the spending of a great American fortune
title_full
Empty Mansions The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune
Empty mansions : the mysterious life of Huguette Clark and the spending of a great American fortune / Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr.
title_short
Empty mansions
title_sub
the mysterious life of Huguette Clark and the spending of a great American fortune
topic_facet
Biography & Autobiography
Clark, Huguette
Clark, William Andrews
Collectors and collecting
Eccentrics and eccentricities
Family
Heiresses
History
Homes and haunts
Mansions
Nonfiction
Recluses

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