The silver swan : in search of Doris Duke / Sallie Bingham.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bingham, Sallie, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Duke, Doris, 1912-1993.

Duke, Doris.

United States--Biography.

United States.

Celebrities--United States--Biography.

Celebrities.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xiii, 316 pages, 16 unnumbered leaves of plates / ; 23 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020.

Summary:

"In The Silver Swan, Sallie Bingham chronicles one of the great underexplored lives of the twentieth century and the very archetype of the modern woman. "Don't touch that girl, she'll burn your fingers," FBI director J. Edgar Hoover once said about Doris Duke, the inheritor of James Buchanan Duke's billion-dollar tobacco fortune. During her lifetime, she would be blamed for scorching many, including her mother and various ex-lovers. She established her first foundation when she was twenty-one; cultivated friendships with the likes of Jackie Kennedy, Imelda Marcos, and Michael Jackson; flaunted interracial relationships; and adopted a thirty-two year-old woman she believed to be the reincarnation of her deceased daughter. This is also the story of the great houses she inhabited, including the classically proportioned limestone mansion on Fifth Avenue, the sprawling Duke Farms in New Jersey, the Gilded Age mansion Rough Point in Newport, Shangri La in Honolulu, and Falcon's Lair overlooking Beverly Hills."-- Provided by publisher.

Notes:

Includes index.

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: Beardwood Fund bookplate.

ISBN:

9780374142599

0374142599

OCLC:

1041208174