Fortune's Many Houses

Fortune's Many Houses PDF Author: Simon Welfare
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 198212864X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
A unique and fascinating look at Victorian society through the remarkable lives of an enlightened and philanthropic aristocratic couple, the Marquess and Marchioness of Aberdeen, who tried to change the world for the better but paid a heavy price. This is a true tale of love and loss, fortune and misfortune. In the late 19th century, John and Ishbel Gordon, the Marquess and Marchioness of Aberdeen, were the couple who seemed to have it all: a fortune that ran into the tens of millions, a magnificent stately home in Scotland surrounded by one of Europe’s largest estates, a townhouse in London’s most fashionable square, cattle ranches in Texas and British Columbia, and the governorships of Ireland and Canada where they lived like royalty. Together they won praise for their work as social reformers and pioneers of women’s rights, and enjoyed friendships with many of the most prominent figures of the age, from Britain’s Prime Ministers to Oliver Wendell-Holmes and P.T. Barnum and Queen Victoria herself. Yet by the time they died in the 1930s, this gilded couple’s luck had long since run out: they had faced family tragedies, scandal through their unwitting involvement in one of the “crimes of the century” and, most catastrophically of all, they had lost both their fortune and their lands. This fascinating family quest for the reason for their dramatic downfall is also a moving and colorful exploration of society in Victorian Britain and North America and an inspirational feast for history lovers.

Fortune's Many Houses

Fortune's Many Houses PDF Author: Simon Welfare
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 198212864X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book Here

Book Description
A unique and fascinating look at Victorian society through the remarkable lives of an enlightened and philanthropic aristocratic couple, the Marquess and Marchioness of Aberdeen, who tried to change the world for the better but paid a heavy price. This is a true tale of love and loss, fortune and misfortune. In the late 19th century, John and Ishbel Gordon, the Marquess and Marchioness of Aberdeen, were the couple who seemed to have it all: a fortune that ran into the tens of millions, a magnificent stately home in Scotland surrounded by one of Europe’s largest estates, a townhouse in London’s most fashionable square, cattle ranches in Texas and British Columbia, and the governorships of Ireland and Canada where they lived like royalty. Together they won praise for their work as social reformers and pioneers of women’s rights, and enjoyed friendships with many of the most prominent figures of the age, from Britain’s Prime Ministers to Oliver Wendell-Holmes and P.T. Barnum and Queen Victoria herself. Yet by the time they died in the 1930s, this gilded couple’s luck had long since run out: they had faced family tragedies, scandal through their unwitting involvement in one of the “crimes of the century” and, most catastrophically of all, they had lost both their fortune and their lands. This fascinating family quest for the reason for their dramatic downfall is also a moving and colorful exploration of society in Victorian Britain and North America and an inspirational feast for history lovers.

Fortune's Children

Fortune's Children PDF Author: Arthur T. Vanderbilt, II
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062288377
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 601

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Book Description
Vanderbilt: the very name signifies wealth. The family patriarch, "the Commodore," built up a fortune that made him the world's richest man by 1877. Yet, less than fifty years after the Commodore's death, one of his direct descendants died penniless, and no Vanderbilt was counted among the world's richest people. Fortune's Children tells the dramatic story of all the amazingly colorful spenders who dissipated such a vast inheritance.

Empty Mansions

Empty Mansions PDF Author: Bill Dedman
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345534522
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Janet Maslin, The New York Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch 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. Praise for Empty Mansions “An amazing story of profligate wealth . . . an outsized tale of rags-to-riches prosperity.”—The New York Times “An evocative and rollicking read, part social history, part hothouse mystery, part grand guignol.”—The Daily Beast “Fascinating . . . [a] haunting true-life tale.”—People “One of those incredible stories that you didn’t even know existed. It filled a void.”—Jon Stewart, The Daily Show “Thrilling . . . deliciously scandalous.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Fortune and Fate

Fortune and Fate PDF Author: Sharon Shinn
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780441016365
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Behind the walls of a vast family estate called Fortune, Wen, a Warrior Rider hired to protect a young heiress, must face a terrifying challenge that will lead her into a confrontation with her ultimate destiny, in a new novel set in the world of the Twelve Houses series.

Fortune's Rocks

Fortune's Rocks PDF Author: Anita Shreve
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 9780316781015
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
Olympia Biddeford's passionate affair with a married man nearly three times her age, results in her being exiled from society and forces her to make a new life for herself.

Love Fortunes and Other Disasters

Love Fortunes and Other Disasters PDF Author: Kimberly Karalius
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1250063604
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Love is real in the town of Grimbaud and Fallon Dupree has dreamed of attending high school there for years. After all, generations of Dupree's have successfully followed the (100% accurate!) love fortunes from Zita's famous Love Charms Shop to happily marry their high school sweethearts. It's a tradition. So she is both stunned and devastated when her fortune states that she will NEVER find love. Fortunately, Fallon isn't the only student with a terrible love fortune, and a rebellion is brewing. Fallon is determined to take control of her own fate—even if it means working with a notorious heartbreaker like Sebastian. Will Fallon and Sebastian be able to overthrow Zita's tyranny and fall in love?

The House in Tyne Street

The House in Tyne Street PDF Author: Linda Fortune
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
In the course of 27 short chapters, Linda Fortune draws a vivid picture of a place, time and lifestyle that no longer exist. This book never gets bogged down in politics. Instead, it succeeds in recreating a specific time and specific place with its focus firstly on one family in particular, warts and all. A bigger picture also emerges, that of a whole community: people teachers, shop-keepers, barbers, entertainers and specific places movie-houses, shops, streets and lanes still recalled by many who lived there. Eighteen black and white photographs by photographers such as Cloete Breytenbach, J H Greshoff, George Hallet and Noor Ebrahim, and family snapshots from Linda s own collection, adds to the value of The House in Tyne Street as a recreation of and testament to the District.

A Hazard of New Fortunes

A Hazard of New Fortunes PDF Author: William Dean Howells
Publisher: Lindhardt og Ringhof
ISBN: 8728341023
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 523

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Book Description
New York City. The dawn of a new century. Two men intent on changing the world with two very different visions. When a self-made millionaire and a new-age social revolutionary come head-to-head, there’s no telling who will come out on top. One wants the world. The other wants to give it to those less fortunate. And when a goodwill man steps in to act as mediator, he soon finds himself at a crisis of conscience. How should man choose who wins and loses? What is the best approach for equality for all? And can social struggles ever really be overcome? Weaving a compelling and thought provoking tale of the moral highs and lows during the American age of emerging social struggle, William Dean Howells’ ‘A Hazard of New Fortunes’ is the perfect historical companion for ‘The Big Short’ fans of Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Steve Carell and Brad Pitt. It will make you stop, think and listen to the life experiences of those around you. William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was an American novelist, literary critic and playwright nicknamed ‘The Dean of American Letters’. His work spans the Christmas story 'Christmas Every Day' and the novels 'The Rise of Silas Lapham' and 'A Traveler from Altruria'. An intellectual moral thinker, Howells also wrote critical essays on the work of Henrik Ibsen, Émile Zola, Leo Tolstoy and Emily Dickenson. Most notably, his novel ‘A Hazard of New Fortunes’ serves as a moral dissection of new age social struggles at the dawn of the 20th century America. Howells remains today a prominent thinker and writer of new age fiction.

House of Outrageous Fortune

House of Outrageous Fortune PDF Author: Michael Gross
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451666217
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
“Michael Gross’s new book…packs [in] almost as many stories as there are apartments in the building. The Jackie Collins of real estate likes to map expressions of power, money and ego… Even more crammed with billionaires and their exploits than 740 Park” (Penelope Green, The New York Times). With two concierge-staffed lobbies, a walnut-lined library, a lavish screening room, a private sixty-seat restaurant offering residents room service, a health club complete with a seventy-foot swimming pool, penthouses that cost almost $100 million, and a tenant roster that’s a roll call of business page heroes and villains, Fifteen Central Park West is the most outrageously successful, insanely expensive, titanically tycoon-stuffed real estate development of the twenty-first century. In this “stunning” (CNN) and “deliciously detailed” (Booklist, starred review) New York Times bestseller, journalist Michael Gross turns his gimlet eye on the new-money wonderland that’s sprung up on the southwest rim of Central Park. Mixing an absorbing business epic with hilarious social comedy, Gross “takes another gossip-laden bite out of the upper crust” (Sam Roberts, The New York Times), which includes Denzel Washington, Sting, Norman Lear, top executives, and Russian and Chinese oligarchs, to name a few. And he recounts the legendary building’s inspired genesis, costly construction, and the flashy international lifestyle it has brought to a once benighted and socially déclassé Manhattan neighborhood. More than just an apartment building, 15CPW represents a massive paradigm shift in the lifestyle of New York’s rich and famous—and is a bellwether of the city’s changing social and financial landscape.

Investing in Gold Mine Houses: How to Uncover a Fortune Fixing Small Ugly Houses and Apartments

Investing in Gold Mine Houses: How to Uncover a Fortune Fixing Small Ugly Houses and Apartments PDF Author: Jay P. DeCima
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 0071608354
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
The smartest investing options for today’s market from a rental property expert Buying and renting out property can generate steady, reliable income year after year. No one knows this better than “Fixer Jay,” the legendary house-fixer and do-it-yourself investor with more than forty-five years of experience. His step-by-step guide shows investors how to find the right property, fix it up, rent it out, increase income by 50 percent, and retire in style.