Juicy account of a shocking scandal.
New York contributing editor Gordon interviewed more than 230 people to craft this readable soap opera about a wealthy family wracked by greed and animosity.
In 2006, the affairs of Brooke Astor splashed across tabloid front pages when her grandson Philip accused his father, Anthony Marshall, of elder abuse and sued to have him removed as the New York philanthropist’s guardian. Within months, Astor’s only child was charged with swindling millions from his 104-year-old mother’s estate. Lawyer Francis X. Morrisey Jr., who frequently escorted Mrs. Astor to benefits and parties, allegedly conspired with Tony Marshall to induce his mother to change her will to give Tony $60 million earmarked for charity. The heroes in this sordid tale are the hired help, who saw that the aging social arbiter was being taking advantage of and said so. “I was employed by Brooke Astor—my loyalty was to her,” said butler Chris Ely, who hinted to his boss’s friend David Rockefeller that things were awry. Taking us deep inside Mrs. Astor’s world, from her 14-room apartment at 778 Park Avenue and her 75-acre estate in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., to the board rooms of the Metropolitan Museum and other charities, the author describes the final dementia-wracked days of this beguiling, white-gloved narcissist, who died in 2007. She outlived three husbands (including Vincent Astor, who left her a fortune), disliked son Tony, a Broadway producer who managed her finances, and loathed his wife Charlene. Her affection went to grandsons Philip and Alec, both disappointments to their father. Readers will be saddened by the despair and paranoia of the philanthropist’s last days, cheer at the love and concern of her friends and take perverse pleasure in watching Tony ostracized at a charity event and forced to economize by firing his chauffeur and driving his own Toyota Prius. With the criminal case against her son and the challenges to her will yet to be resolved, Mrs. Astor lies in a Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., cemetery. Her headstone reads, “I had a wonderful life.”
Juicy account of a shocking scandal.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-618-89373-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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