Howard Hughes: The Untold Story

Howard Hughes: The Untold Story
by Peter Harry Brown, Pat H. Broeske

Howard Hughes: The Untold Story
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Book Summary Information

Author: Pat H. Broeske, Peter Harry Brown
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-11-03
ISBN: 0306813920
Number of pages: 528
Publisher: Da Capo Press

Book Reviews of Howard Hughes: The Untold Story

Book Review: No Need To Exaggerate These Facts
Summary: 5 Stars


"The Aviator" inspired me to take another look at Howard Hughes. The movie told a story only possible in America, the 20th Century in particular. Utterly amazing, I was on the lookout for a book on Hughes' life. I don't think I could have started with a better portrait of Hughes than the one painted here by Brown & Broeske. Wisely, they have told Hughes' story with a realism and attention to detail that allow the facts to speak for themselves. Hughes life was so extraordinary that any attempt to sensationalize it is redundant and suspect. I found such amazing scenes from the "Aviator" as the crash at Beverly Hills in 1946 to pale in comparison to the event as it is described in this book. As hard as it is to put down, I also found this easy to read in bursts as my schedule allows. So dramatic and fascinating at every turn, if it has to be put down, one never forgets where they left off.
Who would ever want their personal lives investigated, picked over, revised and speculated upon, and then transformed into countless books and a movie or two? This American fascination with everyone's business but their own has made anyone considering a public life to factor in what such a wholesale invasion of their privacy is worth. Just because it is written or said is no guarantee it is true and once it starts there is no stopping it. This is a story of a man as he runs like hell to stay one step ahead of the forces that feed off but threaten to consume his uniqueness. Like many who seek fame, Hughes would pour gasoline on the fire and then run from it. For all the contradictions in Howard Hughes' life, it is hard to imagine how much more drama, danger, triumph and extraordinary achievement could be crammed into a just one. "HH, The Untold Story" could almost just as easily be about what Hughes was never able to accomplish in the second half of his life as a result of his own weaknesses compounded by the target fame and fortune paints on your back when you weren't looking. The authors are fair and compassionate in telling the good and bad in this life. The medical issues that complicated matters worse were not fairly represented in what I have read about Hughes in the past. I finally have a sense of Hughes as a human being and individual. For all the neurotic fear of germs, this was one tough customer. He had many lives and should have died and gone broke time and again if he didn't possess such a remarkable resilience and determination powered by a self confident, brilliant intellect. The 20th Century was his time and he didn't waste the opportunity. Hughes makes Bill Gates look like a wimp, coward and a crashing bore by comparison. With the uncertainty surrounding how the people around him took control of his life and affairs in his last years, the contrast between the deceit and greed driving Hughes' "caretakers" and what motivated Hughes to live such a dynamic life is startling. It would be too easy for this to be another book about a wild, eccentric madman. Instead it is a fascinating and true to life tale of ambition, genius, imagination and desire and everything that comes along with these things when someone believes that action speaks louder than words. As grand as his life was, Hughes still gave more than he took. Highly recommended reading.

Summary of Howard Hughes: The Untold Story

Howard Hughes was one of the most amazing, intriguing, and controversial figures of the twentieth century. He was the billionaire head of a giant corporation, a genius inventor, an ace pilot, a matinee-idol-handsome playboy, a major movie maker who bedded a long list of Hollywood glamour queens, a sexual sultan with a harem of teenage consorts, a political insider with intimate ties to Watergate, a Las Vegas kingpin, and ultimately a bizarre recluse whose final years and shocking death were cloaked in macabre mystery. Now he is the subject of Martin Scorsese's biopic The Aviator. Few people have been able to penetrate the wall of secrecy that enshrouded this complex man. In this fascinating, revelation-packed biography, the full story of one of the most daring, enigmatic, and reclusive power brokers America has ever known is finally told.

Surely there are few untold stories about Hughes, the brilliant inventor and shrewd businessman who pioneered commercial aviation, became the only individual ever to personally own a movie studio, led Trans World Airlines to become the preeminent international air carrier, womanized his way across the tabloid headlines of the 1920s and '30s, and descended into frightful paranoia and drug addiction in his old age. Authors Broeske and Brown concentrate on the womanizing in this entertaining biography, which chronicles Hughes' affair with Katharine Hepburn, among many others.

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