Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach

Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach
by Laurence Leamer

Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach
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Book Summary Information

Author: Laurence Leamer
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2009-01-20
ISBN: 1401322913
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Hyperion
Product features:
  • ISBN13: 9781401322915
  • Condition: NEW
  • Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Book Reviews of Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach

Book Review: Madness Under the Royal Palms
Summary: 3 Stars

There is one thing you need to know about Palm Beach: it's all about money. It's about how much a person is worth, how much the house cost, how much the widow inherited, and how much one donates to charity. In //Madness Under the Royal Palms//, the author, in spite of owning a home there, does not paint a pretty picture of the lifestyles of the uber rich on this exclusive island near Miami. Residents appear superficial, racist, and lacking in basic human values. Marriages are made not for love, but for business investments, and many are between sixty-plus men and their much younger trophy wives. Joining the right club is important. There are designated WASC clubs and designated Jewish clubs; as late as the early nineties, Jews weren't allowed into certain ones. Interestingly, Donald Trump's golf club, Mar-a-Lago, was the first to admit anyone, as long as they could afford the $310,000 membership. How often a couple's photo appears in the //Palm Beach Daily News// ("Shiny Sheet") can make or break one's reputation. Donald Trump, Bernie Madoff, and John Lennon are the only recognizable names among the many people profiled. Some of the more interesting include Fred and Rose Keller of the celebrated murder case and poseur Sonny Peixoto. Though there's little to admire about the inhabitants of Palm Beach, the book is nevertheless fascinating. Readers will feel like they are a fly on the wall, and a wealthy wall at that.

Reviewed by Leslie Wolfson

Summary of Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach

Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme has devastated the eternally sunny world of Palm Beach, bringing down multimillionaires and destroying once wealthy widows. At the center of the scandal is the isolated, insulated winter home of the mega wealthy. Suddenly, everyone in America is talking about the South Florida island and the rarified life so apart from the rest of America. Everyone wants to know what are the deepest truths of this strange, exotic universe of wealth and privilege.

In Madness Under the Royal Palms, Laurence Leamer has the answers. It took him fifteen years to get them, and to expose the inner life and drama of the wealthy as it has never been exposed before. It is an often shocking, scandalous book that will forever change not only the way Palm Beach is viewed but the life of wealth and privilege in America.

Leave it to Leamer, the bestselling author known for getting the inside story on his elusive subjects, to take us behind the walls of America?s most exclusive enclave of wealth and privilege. In Madness, Leamer tells a braided story involving a socialite determined to make it to the top of Palm Beach society, two infamous murders, and a powerful society reporter. As a backdrop, Leamer tells the story of the clash between old money and new, religion and status, and the love, lust, and fatal hatreds that determine the shape of a fiercely protected society. The cast of characters include trophy wives, trophy husbands, purported gigolos, glamorous widows, a pioneering gay couple, a wildly irreverent event planner, a sociopathic multimillionaire, and an elegant society queen.

For a hundred years Palm Beach has been a fantasy land nurtured by, and maintained for, the megawealthy. In the end, Leamer?s tale of money, murder and mad pretension reveals a darker strain. Uncovering that strain, as the author himself writes, ?turned into as fascinating, in some cases as shocking, and always as unexpected a journey as I have ever taken.?


Guest Reviewer: Meryl Gordon, Author of Mrs. Astor Regrets

Just the name--Palm Beach--conjures up an American fantasy of wealth, privilege and exclusivity. Laurence Leamer, in his well-written and entertaining new book, Madness Under the Royal Palms, offers up an inside look at this playground of the rich, and its under-class of social-climbing wannabes. Tracing the history of Palm Beach and its magnificent real estate, describing the fabulous parties, investigating some of the city's sordid secrets, Leamer's book provides a memorable, and at times haunting, portrayal of high society at a moment of transition, where things are often not what they seem.

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