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Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach |
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Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach |
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基本信息·出版社：Hyperion
·页码：368 页
·出版日期：2009年01月
·ISBN：1401322913
·International Standard Book Number：1401322913
·条形码：9781401322915
·EAN：9781401322915
·版本：1
·装帧：精装
·正文语种：英语
内容简介 Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme has devastated the eternally sunny world of Palm Beach, bringing down multimillionaires and destroying once wealthy widows. At the center of the scandal is the isolated, insulated winter home of the mega wealthy. Suddenly, everyone in America is talking about the South Florida island and the rarified life so apart from the rest of America. Everyone wants to know what are the deepest truths of this strange, exotic universe of wealth and privilege.
In Madness Under the Royal Palms, Laurence Leamer has the answers. It took him fifteen years to get them, and to expose the inner life and drama of the wealthy as it has never been exposed before. It is an often shocking, scandalous book that will forever change not only the way Palm Beach is viewed but the life of wealth and privilege in America.
Leave it to Leamer, the bestselling author known for getting the inside story on his elusive subjects, to take us behind the walls of America’s most exclusive enclave of wealth and privilege. In Madness, Leamer tells a braided story involving a socialite determined to make it to the top of Palm Beach society, two infamous murders, and a powerful society reporter. As a backdrop, Leamer tells the story of the clash between old money and new, religion and status, and the love, lust, and fatal hatreds that determine the shape of a fiercely protected society. The cast of characters include trophy wives, trophy husbands, purported gigolos, glamorous widows, a pioneering gay couple, a wildly irreverent event planner, a sociopathic multimillionaire, and an elegant society queen.
For a hundred years Palm Beach has been a fantasy land nurtured by, and maintained for, the megawealthy. In the end, Leamer’s tale of money, murder and mad pretension reveals a darker strain. Uncovering that strain, as the author himself writes, “turned into as fascinating, in some cases as shocking, and always as unexpected a journey as I have ever taken.”
作者简介 Laurence Leamer is the author of thirteen books, including
The Kennedy Women and
Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger, with many bestsellers among them. Leamer was on the staff at
Newsweek, and has written for
The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Playboy, and many other publications. He lives in Palm Beach and Washington, D.C.
编辑推荐 Guest Reviewer: Meryl Gordon, Author of Mrs. Astor Regrets Just the name--Palm Beach--conjures up an American fantasy of wealth, privilege and exclusivity. Laurence Leamer, in his well-written and entertaining new book,
Madness Under the Royal Palms, offers up an inside look at this playground of the rich, and its under-class of social-climbing wannabes. Tracing the history of Palm Beach and its magnificent real estate, describing the fabulous parties, investigating some of the city's sordid secrets, Leamer's book provides a memorable, and at times haunting, portrayal of high society at a moment of transition, where things are often not what they seem.
专业书评 From Publishers WeeklyLeamer (
The Kennedy Women) reveals the secrets of the Palm Beach elite who reside behind the high walls and manicured hedges of this exclusive enclave. A winter resident since 1994, the author gains the trust of his subjects, playing tennis with them and attending their parties. Such firsthand experience is supplemented by newspaper articles and interviews with scores of men and women who, although usually guarded, are unusually open to Leamer (the informant for the chapter Palm Beach Millionaire Seeks Playmate gave the author access to his personal papers, including unpublished memoirs). The book's highly visual vignettes—dominated by divorce, infidelity, excessive drinking and violence—produce a depressing picture of sad, angry, insecure and frequently nasty people hiding behind empty smiles, luxury cars and socially invisible servants. Leamer reflects: Like [Henry] James, I found that few of the lives have the beauty of the surroundings, or the depths of the artistic vision that inspired this island. Some readers may find this book a penetrating portrayal of a privileged segment of the American population; others might regard it as a book-length gossip column.
(Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
