Empty Mansions
The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune
by Bill Dedman
Recommended by Morgan Housel and Jon Stewart
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Should I read this?
Recommended by 3 sources and appears in Most Recommended Books, History, and Nonfiction.
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 twentyfirstcentury battle over a $300 mi...
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Why recommended
Recommended by 3 sources and appears in Most Recommended Books, History, and Nonfiction.
Recommended by notable people
People and public figures who have recommended this book.
Recommendation Signals
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Jon Stewart
“It’s one of those incredible stories you didn’t know existed, It filled a void. | The story of an heiress who inherits a fortune but lives a life of seclusion with almost no contact with the outside world while collecting mansions that go unvisited until she dies at age 104 after living in a hospital for years despite excellent health, setting off an epic battle for her money. Like the Vanderbilt story, it?s a fascinating look at what money does, and doesn?t, do for you.”
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Not sure if this is the right fit?
Consider Accidental Presidents by Jared Cohen. Recommended by 10 sources.
“Accidental Presidents offers eight narrative portraits of men who succeeded to the U.S. presidency without election, using anecdote-rich scenes and readable context to show how personality and circumstance interact with office power. It’s strongest as a set of self-contained stories that make succession stakes concrete for non-specialist readers; it does not prioritize dense archival argument or exhaustive methodology, so expect some interpretive generalizations and repeated themes across cases. Use it for fast historical orientation rather than scholarly deep-dives.”
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Each recommendation is collected from a public source — interviews, articles, or curated lists — and linked to its original URL. Books with many verifiable recommendations from respected people rank higher.
Empty Mansions
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