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Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of an American Fortune
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Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of an American Fortune
Unavailable
Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of an American Fortune
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Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of an American Fortune

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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.

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.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 10, 2013
ISBN9780804149556
Unavailable
Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of an American Fortune

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Rating: 3.778409090909091 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really enjoyed this book. If you are not used to regular non-fiction, you might not like this. It does not read like a novel like some non-fiction will occasionally. I, however, was happy with it. I had heard about Hugette Clarke before she died and was interested in what had happened to her and her life. She donated lots of money as well as spent lots of money.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Super interesting. The wealth of this family is really mind-boggling and the narration includes actual voice tapes of Huguette which was super fun.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book shows that truth can be stranger than fiction, indeed. Huguette Clark was one of the world's richest heiresses and passed away two weeks short of her 105th birthday in 2011. She owned several sumptuous residences, yet chose to live in a hospital room for the last 20 years of her life, even though her health was relatively good.Huguette Clark's life isn't always the focus of this book -- perhaps because she was very reclusive -- a considerable part covers how her father, a Copper King, earned his fortune and lived his life (a large part of it was during the Gilded Age). I found this fascinating overall, even though it was hard to know much about Huguette herself because of how she lived her life -- mostly single (she had a very brief marriage without any children) and as a person who basically disappeared from sight. Even the 19 relatives (children/grandchildren of her half-siblings) who went on to claim her remaining fortune had not seen her for at least 40 years, if at all.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    3.5
    Have you ever seen a beautiful old house and wished you could peak behind the curtain and see who lives there, and more importantly how they can afford to live there?! That's exactly what author Dedman set to find out when he stumbled upon an opulent, empty mansion for sale back in 2009. His curiosity led him on a quest to find out more about it's wealthy owner Huguette Clark, and why she held the deed to numerous, palatial homes, all unoccupied and some never lived in, while she resided in a hospital room in New York City.
    The story is fascinating and the author has done a great job of playing detective, uncovering the facts, and relaying his findings to us in well written book. I only wish the author could have included more pictures, but maybe they just weren't available. So if you like mysteries, old houses, and eccentric individuals this is the book for you!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    An interesting account of both the perks and perils of substantial inherited wealth. If you know anyone, especially an American citizen, who hasn't prepared a proper living will and/or last will and testament, this book would make a great gift.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Excellent book, very well written, I just couldn't get through all its detail.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Empty Mansions This is less a review of the book than of Huguette Clark's life. I give her 4 1/2 stars for staying true to her own peculiar self for more than a century. I don't know that this is a great book viewed strictly on literary terms--the writing is purely serviceable and I don't think the organization works well--but the story of Huguette Clark is going to stay with me for a long time.

    I said in my post yesterday that Huguette Clark was happy, and she certainly was for a long time. But something happened as she got older. Her staff dwindled. She developed a facial cancer that was left untreated for a significant period of time. When someone finally sought treatment for her, the cancer had made it nearly impossible to eat and she had almost starved to death. she required cosmetic surgery to repair the damage to her face, and she was no longer able to eat solid foods. (The big flaw of this book, in my opinion, is that there is a ten-year gap which goes undescribed, that might explain how this possibly could have happened. Yes, her staff was smaller -- but you would think that even a staff of one could have prevented the cancer from advancing so far before it was treated.) It is astonishing that she managed to recover from this cancer and then live another two decades.

    As I suspected, the last twenty years, which she spent in the hospital, took a dark and disturbing turn. She was still, in many ways, happy. But she was also clearly taken advantage of, by her attorney, her accountant, and most significantly, her beloved nurse, to whom she gave literally millions of dollars over the course of twenty years. (Clark paid for the nurse's children's school from preschool through college. She paid for vacations and camps and summer homes and a Bentley.) Clark's will cut out her family completely, leaving vast sums to caregivers, as well as establishing an arts foundation in California.

    When she died at 105, her half-nieces and nephews (who had barely seen or spoken to her since the 1950s, if then) were shocked to hear they'd been left out of the will and sued. And although they may have been legally and even ethically right--as I said, Clark was clearly taken advantage of--it's hard to feel sympathetic or morally indignant on behalf of a group of people who didn't even bother to check on their elderly aunt after 9/11, or during the 2003 power outage in the heat of the summer. (The book ends before the final settlement, but you can read about it here. Essentially, the nurse was the big loser.)

    You read this book and you want to draw some kind of lessons from Clark's life. Huguette Clark made herself comfortable in her hospital bed for two decades, but she died more alone than she realized, having for many years trusted people who were not trustworthy. When I turned the last page, I wanted to call everyone I knew just to extract promises that they would not leave me alone in a dark apartment in my old age. I thought, she should have gotten out more. She shouldn't have isolated herself. But that's not a rational response. Clark's main problem was that she outlived everyone--her doctors, her lawyers, her dearest friends. No amount of face-to-face contact would have prevented that.

    It is tempting to look at the end of her story and allow it to color her whole life, but that would betray years of contentment and even joy. The authors of this book, to their credit, make this point well: "She was a recluse in that she locked herself away from travel and sunsets and cafes, but a woman who leaves twenty thousand pages of affectionate correspondence is also a world traveler."
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Amasing story,I learn a lot from old lady historical life...I would recomend to read this book to everyone...
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The fascinating story of one of America's richest and least known families. It begins with W.A. Clark who made his fortune during the Gilded Age, but concentrates on his youngest child, Huguette, who died at 105 in May, 2011. During most of her adult life Huguette chose to live as a recluse, seeing only the few people who worked for her and a very few friends. She did not give her phone number to anyone and no one was able to speak to her unless she called them. In 1991 cancers had eaten her face away to such an extent that she had to seek the help of a friend. A doctor came to her Fifth Ave apartment and insisted Huguette go to a hospital and after a fight she chose the private Doctors Hospital, best known for celebrity clients like Michael Jackson and Marilyn Monroe. Ironically once Huguette was at Doctors she refused to go home again and stayed at the hospital 20 years although there was no medical reason to keep her there. The last chapters revolve around Huguette's estate, the fight over it (the court had not fully resolved the issues in 2013 when the book was written), and the subject of Hugette's competency because she had given large sums of money to selected people during the twenty years she lived in the hospital. To her nurse alone she had given over $30 million. Huguette was a complicated, intelligent woman and there are no easy answers to any of the questions that her many instances of unusual behavior prompted. 4 stars.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Truly the last survivor of the gilded age. This book was extremely well written and took us from the building of a fortune by her father to her final demise over a century later. I could not stop reading to see how it turned out. I was appalled by all of Ms. Clark's caretakers from the hospital, to her nurse, to her accountants and lawyers. They all took advantage of a clearly troubled woman despite her outward appearance she had deep seated emotional issues.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Amazing story well told. I wouldn't have thought a story about someone that was a recluse for half a century could be so interesting. A minor complaint, I would have prefered the reference notes to be indicated in the running text, not just by page number.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Where I got the book: LibraryThing Early Reviewers ProgramJournalist Bill Dedman came across one of Huguette Clark's properties when, frustrated by never seeming to find the right house to move to, he decided to look up properties he really couldn't afford on the internet. As you do. This led him to discover that Huguette Clark had spent the last decades of her life in an ordinary room in a New York hospital, despite being in reasonable health and having multi-million-dollar real estate in New York, Connecticut and California.He discovered that Madame Clark, as she liked to be known, was the daughter of a copper baron, famous in his lifetime but now forgotten, and his very much younger second wife. She'd spent her early years in France and still retained a slight French accent and a fondness for all things French. She collected dolls and dollhouses, painted in oils and was obsessed with Japanese culture; and yet after living such a reclusive life in her New York apartment that she had allowed cancer to eat away at her face, she now preferred to look at photos of her collections from her hospital bed.And she gave away money--lots of it. Despite the concerted efforts of the hospital and various art foundations to milk her for all she was worth, Huguette preferred to give her money to the people in her life; hospital staff, assistants, the people who looked after her properties and, a little sinisterly, her lawyer and accountant. This created some definite potential conflicts of interest for the people in contact with her, not to mention enormous consequences in terms of gift tax and some very bad feeling on the part of her extended family who didn't actually bother to visit her but wanted her money anyway.There are quite a few levels to this story. There's the history of W.A. Clark, Huguette's father, and how he made his fortune and steamrolled his way into politics, for one. The guy was a player with a foot in US history; the unneeded lots he sold off from his railroad holdings, for example, formed the core of downtown Las Vegas. He did things on a massive scale but once he was dead, nobody carried his legacy forward; they broke up his homes and spent his money instead. As we all know, the entrepreneurial spirit rarely survives a privileged childhood.Then there's the story of Huguette's great spendathon aka her life. I don't think there's anyone for whom the idea of having a bottomless checkbook doesn't bring a gleam to the eye. Huguette had that checkbook--more money than she could get through in her lifetime. There are lists of gifts, lists of purchases, jaw-dropping figures galore for the breathlessly envious or avidly curious to peruse and sigh over.Then there's the sad personal story of a woman who must have always wondered if her friends were friends because of her or because of her money. Even the distant cousin who spoke with her three or four times a year on the phone was recording those conversations and co-authored the book; he wasn't in the will, but boy he could still make money from Tante Huguette. It's a great picture of how life as a seriously moneyed person is also a lonely life, and it makes me very happy that my own checkbook has a very solid bottom.The material is nicely arranged, the writing is lively and there are pictures. An interesting book for the nonfiction lover with a fascination for how the other half live.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Though prominent in his day, mining, banking, and railroad magnate William Andrews Clark (1839-1925) has been all but forgotten. This engrossing book revives his story and that of his daughter Huguette Clark (1906-2011), youngest of the five children who survived him. Huguette emerges as an extraordinary, if somewhat eccentric, woman who inherited a fortune but lived out her last decades in a spartan hospital room--despite no medical or financial necessity--while her five homes (the titular "empty mansions") sat vacant. Carrying out the "mansions" theme, most of the chapters bear the name or address of one of the Clark residences and focus on the period in which one or more of the Clarks occupied or acquired it.The authors, one an award-winning journalist and the other a half-grandnephew of Huguette, engrossingly recount W. A.'s rise to wealth, as well as his daughter's life. For this reader's interests, they describe the houses and furnishings in perhaps too much detail. They abundantly offset it, however, with the final chapters--a riveting chronicle of Huguette's late-in-life reliance on caregivers and other employees who professed their devotion to her while, in some cases, failing to protect her valuable belongings from theft and, in other instances, reporting their monetary woes and shamelessly accepting checks totaling millions of dollars. These chapters serve as a cautionary tale for anyone in comfortable circumstances--not only the wealthiest few--who have no immediate family whom they can trust in old age.Although the authors emphasize that Huguette made these gifts willingly, that her mind was unimpaired, that she had many friends, and that she long remained in touch (on her terms) with certain of her half-siblings and their descendants, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Huguette's life was as empty as her mansions. Although she made generous gifts to certain arts organizations and contributed to memorials to deceased relatives, her wealth would have supported much more meaningful philanthropy. If I had browsed through this book in a bookstore, I would not have been tempted to buy it. Something about its description in the Early Reviewer list attracted me, however, and I'm very glad that I read Empty Mansions--though I can't quite explain why a book about someone notable only for inheriting great wealth and spending it erratically merited being written. Did it impress me because it is extensively documented? Because it is well structured and engagingly written? Because Huguette is unlike anyone else I've ever heard of? There is something sad and abnormal about this lady, yet she emerges as someone I would like to have known--even if I never saw her brandish her checkbook.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An interesting story about one of America's (now seemingly forgotten) richest families, primarily about the youngest daughter, Huguette. I'm a sucker for books about houses, and the story of the mansions this family built were the primary reason that I requested this book. Getting to know the life of Huguette Clark was a nice little "bonus" (to me at first, at least), and the character that she was and the ones that were in her life, were people that I won't forget any time soon, for better or worse. The writing is wonderful, though it took longer for me to really get interested than I expected, and once the rhythm was established, it was difficult to put the book down. Starting out telling the life story of Huguette's father, W.A., seemed a mis-step at first, but it's necessary to understand the type of person that he was, and the kind of life that he lived, to fully understand his daughters' eccentricities and how in the world she could have so much and by choice spend the final 2 decades of her life essentially in isolation in a hospital room. Never boring, sympathetic, informative, and slightly nostalgic, Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell Jr do a fantastic job telling this story. I'll be buying the final print copy so I can admire the added photographs.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Huguette Clark was the youngest daughter of a US senator and wealthy industrialist. She all but disappeared from public life after 1930, but when she died in 2011 at the grand age of 105, she left a fortune of over $300 million. Investigative reporter Bill Dedman, along with Clark's cousin, Paul Clark Newell, dig through Huguette's fascinating and intensely private life in Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune. The title refers to Huguette's three palatial mansions, in Santa Barbara, Connecticut, and New York City, that sat vacant but meticulously maintained in the last decades of her life, while she lived in a private hospital. The book is thoroughly researched and crisply written, offering a fascinating look at a woman who could have spent her life hobnobbing in the highest circles of the art and social world, but chose to turn inward and become a recluse.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Great read. So interesting! Thanks again book club for this wonderful pick. :)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A fascinating story of the background and life of Huguette Clark and the battle over her fortune. It's amazing to see how, when some people smell money, they circle like sharks.The book was published prior to the conclusion of the court case concerning the distribution of the estate. While the book would have been improved by waiting for the conclusion, one wonders if the settlement was reached so soon after publication when some of the players involve saw how badly they acted put in print.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    What a strange woman, so much money spent, and the greed of so many around her.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Biography of heiress Huguette Clark, a multimillion dollar heiress who chose to spend the last 20 years of her life as a recluse in a hospital room even though she owned 3 mansions in the country and many luxury apartments in New York.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Absolutely fascinating to learn of the Clark fortune.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Excellent story that includes great historical points in history from the western great plains, the Roaring 20s, WW I and II, terrorist attack of 9/11. All in the context of a family and their wealth. Particularly interesting is the appreciation of art and real estate that gather dust for most of this time period. And of course the story ends with a lawsuit from relatives wanting their share. Lawyers help make this greed possible with contingent fees. Dust to dust!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This story of the wealthy heiress, Huguette Clark, her mansions (empty, but luxurious), her father's $, her life, and her slow demise while living for 20 years in a NYC hospital. All true. I became more and more engaged in the story including to the end where the will is being challenged. The results are online and were a surprise to me. The book is very well-written and surprisingly readable for nonfiction.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    What could have been just a mildly interesting look at a member of the quirky rich turned out to be quite worthwhile. I learned not only of Huguette Clark herself (shy, devoted to the memory of her sister who died at 16 and (quite excessively) to her mother, very focused (!) on her doll houses and other interests) but of her family. The most important Clark to the world at large was her father William A., the founder of the family copper fortune and US senator from Montana. What led to this book was the discovery by one of the authors that the most expensive property for sale in Connecticut in 2009 had never been occupied by its owner in the decades since its purchase in 1951.What we find in the course of the book that this is not the only such property that Huguette owned and had either never visited or had not done so for decades. Ms. Clark's other quirky and expensive behaviors will be left to the reader. Some of these led to lawsuits being filed after her death (age 104) in 2011 and were just settled.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Quite a remarkable book! Maybe the only story of a one percenter I'll ever enjoy. Huguette Clark is a copper heiress to an incredible fortune. She spends her life painting, collecting, and retreating from most of the world. Incredibly generous to friends and family and negligent of her own health, she lives through both the Titanic and 9/11 - all on her own terms. Not always wise but always interesting, as are all of her homes, some of which she funds for decades without ever having seen them. This is so well written and non-judgmental. I'd love to see a documentary made from this book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was a LibraryThing Early Reveiwers book. Huguette Clark, born in 1906, was the daughter of W. A. Clark, a fabulously wealthy copper magnate and US Senator from Montana, who was 67 years old when she was born to his younger second wife. The interesting thing about Huguette is that she spent the 20 years of her life living in a hospital room, while leaving several mansions and huge apartments empty, some which she had never lived in. A very interesting biography of sorts, although I couldn't shake the feeling that the authors had an agenda of some kind that was never made clear. Entirely too much of the book was taken up with the fight over her will, and it wasn't clear to me if that has even been resolved yet. The advance copy didn't have as many pictures as the final copy (I admit it: I went to the store & looked at the pictures in the finished book), but the pictures were great, showing an opulence I don't expect to ever see myself. A good read.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I won this book in exchange for an honest review.This is an ARC edition of the book.Huguette Clark is not a very well know name in America. Neither is her infamous father W.A. Clark. I did not know who the two were until I read this book. Apparently W.A. Clark is a copper baron from the gilded age who sired two daughters at a very advanced age (62). His youngest daughter, Huguette, was thrust into the American limelight by the contest of her will by her family. A will in which she left the bulk of her fortune to her nurse of 20 years, her attorney and her accountant.This is a fascinating story of wealth, generosity and eccentricity. Although the story is the story of Huguette, most of the story is divided between W.A. Clark, his young wife Anna (23) and Huguette. Each character's story is told in snippets and no chronological order. More or less each chapter has to do with a certain subject-matter as related to either W.A., Anna or Huguette.As for the story of Huguette, well, there is very little to tell. We learn about her obsession for privacy and anonymity, her unbridled generosity, and her general oddness and quirkiness. Other than those traits, Huguette is rather boring. Americans love to read about the upper classes and their extravagances and this book satisfies our wants. However, the overall story is kind of flat.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The primary flaw with this book is that it too frequently deviates from the story of Huguette Clark too much. There is a tremendous amount about her father's acquisition of wealth and political plays, much of which is extremely dense information. That material would belong in a separate book about W.A. Clark. The years spanning Huguette's childhood to her final 20 years in a hospital are poorly represented: there's just very little information. I doubt that's the fault of the authors, who clearly did extensive research; it's more a case of trying to pad out thin material. The blurb on the back of my paperback copy (Ballentine Books Trade Paperback Edition, 2014) leads you to believe that the book is packed with tantalizing stories and colorful tales of wealthy eccentricity, but that's not so. There is far more about the untamed West and latter-day legal wrangling than anything else.I appreciate that the authors did not attempt to diagnose Huguette Clark with any particular mental illness or defect. In that case, they truly did acknowledge the paucity of available information. The whole book would have benefited from editing down to the available facts.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I have Asperger's and this is my take Huguette Clark. I absolutely thoroughly enjoyed this book which is a biography of two people, father and daughter, while also being a history of the Gilded Age and a brief overview of the 20th century. I had heard of Ms Clark when she was in the news and concern was raised about whether she may be a case of elder-abuse by those in charge of her financial and medical care, since she was a reclusive centenarian. I then forgot about her until I read a few reviews of this book. Reading those couple of thought-provoking reviews it crossed my mind as to whether Huguette might have been Aspergian; did she have Asperger's.I thought of this because I myself have Asperger's, am a loner and for a certain period of my life was house-bound by choice. My reading interests (naturally?) involve recluses and mental health and historically I'm well-read in the Victorian age and early 20th century. Thus, could not pass up this book.Starting off historically we are given the story of W.A. Clark's life, born 1839, a copper baron and once possibly the richest man in America. The history follows his life, then his second wife, 40 years his junior and their two children, progressing on with his youngest daughter Huguette who lived until the ripe old age of 104 and died in 2011. It absolutely amazes me that the two people, father and daughter, only two generations of a family cover the time period from the 8th President of the US of A, Van Duren to the 44th President, Obama. Hugette herself barely escaped two world disasters, the sinking of the Titanic and the attacks on the World Trade Center. Fascinating!I don't feel Huguette had a sad life at all. Of course, she suffered sad events such as the death of her elder sister at only 17 years of age and perhaps Huguette's life may have been different if this very close sisterly bond had been able to continue into her adulthood. Yes, she had empty mansions and several apartments but many of them were inherited and one especially was dear to her because of it's meaning to her mother. She had many obsessive hobbies and was a very talented painter. Her hobbies included doll houses, normal sized-dolls, miniature house replicas, expert knowledge of Japanese cultural history and cartoons. Painting was more of a profession, though she didn't sell her work; she did consider herself an artist. Huguette may have inherited astronomical amounts of wealth, by today's standards, but this was obtained for her and the family by her father during the Gilded Age, a time when money practically grew on trees for the rich and their extravagance matched that ideology.Huguette herself, like and even more so than her father was passionate about charities and donated millions during her lifetime to the arts, artists, animals, Israel and Girl Scouting. She also was a tremendously giving person and gave away millions to those she called friend. She was a loner, a person who preferred solitude to company but it wasn't until her 50s when her mother died that she truly become reclusive and even then she continued to have occasional visits from a handful of the closest friends. Because of the traits I've mentioned so far, I do come away from this believing that Huguette may very well have been Aspergian. The facts as presented in the book tell that all doctors who examined her diagnosed her free of any mental illness, she was always a lucid person, combine this with the intelligence, talent, "eccentricities" intense hobbies and self-induced reclusiveness, while at the same time being a content person I certainly can identify with her and feel quite confident she may well have been on the Autistic Spectrum, namely Asperger's. Choosing to live in a hospital setting once she no longer had anyone to look after her, she had outlived all her doctors, makes perfect sense to me. The only parts of the book that didn't interest me were the detailed descriptions of the insides and contents of the mansions and apartments. I did find truly absorbing though the life, thoughts and doings of Huguette, a person who on one hand held onto many, many objects (including empty mansions) for sentimental reasons while at the same time handing out cheques for hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars to friends and acquaintances with families and children who needed the money when she herself had no personal use for it except for feeding her hobbies and obsessions; the latter being a typical way of life for aspies. Absolutely loved this book! And am glad Huguette had the money to be able to fulfill herself, during an age when she was not understood, and also able to spread that money to the charities and people she felt could use it and needed it more than she.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A book to be finished. I had to make two attempts to read this book. On first attempt I only got so far before the humongous amount of wealth the Clark family had simply became overwhelming to contemplate. On my second reading I enjoyed it much more. Once you pass the point of trying to keep track of all the truly rare and expensive art, mansions, and hobbies the Clarks had you enjoy the book much more. In fact, one of my favorite anecdotes involved a spur of the moment sale of a Cezanne painting so they could go down the road and buy 4 Stradivarius violins. After numerous mentions of things like this you realize you simply can't keep track of everything and just hang on for the ride. A fascinating ride it is too! Everything from the evolution of our country (and Montana politics) to famous artists and bits of Japanese culture. My biggest suggestion is to push on if you get to a part you consider boring. Just on the next page something you may consider fascinating is bound to happen.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Empty Mansions is the sad tale of the life of Huguette Clark. Ms. Clark's father, W.A. Clark was known as the Cooper King of the U.S. who had his fingers on the pulse of business but not his family. How he or his wife did not realize that Hugette was emotional or mentally disturbed is a mystery. The authors Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell never clearly indicate that she suffered from Autism or another syndrome but even an amateur could read through the lines. Her lawyer, her accountant and that horrible private nurse should have been convicted and stripped of all monies that they were able to steal from a kind sweet old lady. Hope they all burn in hell. The wealth that this family amassed and then sent adrift in the hands of mentally challenged individual is a crime but who could have stopped it and not had been as greedy. Money is the root of all evil as this book will attest.