Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune
by Bill Dedman
- Used
- Very Good
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Very Good/Very Good
- ISBN 10
- 0345534522
- ISBN 13
- 9780345534521
- Seller
-
San Antonio, Texas, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Hardcover Cloth 456 pages. Condition Very Good Dust Jacket Very Good. Presumed First edition later printing 2013 with corresponding number line. Beautiful white boards with black 1/8 spine and gilt embossing on this Clean, tight, square copy with no marks, highlights or bookplates. Book Well kept and carefully stored in unread condition. Slight shelf wear. An unclipped dust jacket |smooth, clean and brilliant with slight shelf wear - a few wrinkles and chips. Not an ex-library, book club or remainder copy.
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.
The No. 1 New York Times bestseller. Best nonfiction books of the year at Goodreads, , and Barnes & Noble. One of the New York Times critic Janet Maslin's 10 favorite books of 2013.
Synopsis
Bill Dedman introduced the public to heiress Huguette Clark and her empty mansions through his compelling series of narratives for NBC, which became the most popular feature in the history of its news website, topping 110 million page views. He received the 1989 Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting while writing for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe . Paul Clark Newell, Jr. , a cousin of Huguette Clark, has researched the Clark family history for twenty years, sharing many conversations with Huguette about her life and family. He received a rare private tour of Bellosguardo, her mysterious estate overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Santa Barbara.
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Details
- Seller
- River House Books (US)
- Seller's Inventory #
- 657318
- Title
- Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune
- Author
- Bill Dedman
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover Cloth
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Jacket Condition
- Very Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First
- Binding
- Hardcover
- ISBN 10
- 0345534522
- ISBN 13
- 9780345534521
- Publisher
- Random House Publishing Group
- Place of Publication
- New York, NY
- Date Published
- 2013
- Pages
- 456
- Bookseller catalogs
- Biography; First Editions; Americana;
Terms of Sale
River House Books
About the Seller
River House Books
About River House Books
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Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Gilt
- The decorative application of gold or gold coloring to a portion of a book on the spine, edges of the text block, or an inlay in...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Remainder
- Book(s) which are sold at a very deep discount to alleviate publisher overstock. Often, though not always, they have a remainder...
- Number Line
- A series of numbers appearing on the copyright page of a book, where the lowest number generally indicates the printing of that...
- Cloth
- "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
- Shelf Wear
- Shelf wear (shelfwear) describes damage caused over time to a book by placing and removing a book from a shelf. This damage is...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...