Citizen Hughes by Michael Drosnin

Description

The richest man in America — and its greatest mystery. He was the richest man in America — and its most mysterious. In Citizen Hughes, Michael Drosnin reconstructs the hidden life of Howard Hughes, the aviator, filmmaker, and billionaire who spent his final years barricaded in darkened penthouses, from thousands of Hughes’s own private memos stolen in 1974.

Drosnin, a reporter who tracked the documents down and spent years verifying them, lets Hughes speak in his own words: the germ-obsessed directives to his aides, the schemes to buy Las Vegas casinos and sway presidents, the fortune spent bending American politics to his will. The picture that emerges is both fascinating and disturbing — a brilliant, visionary empire-builder gradually consumed by paranoia and compulsion, running a secret empire from locked hotel rooms.

Part detective story, part character study, Citizen Hughes is the book that finally pulled back the curtain on one of the twentieth century’s great enigmas. For readers of biography, true crime, and American history alike, it remains the most intimate portrait of the man behind the myth.

He was the richest man in America — and its most mysterious. In Citizen Hughes, Michael Drosnin reconstructs the hidden life of Howard Hughes, the aviator, filmmaker, and billionaire who spent his final years barricaded in darkened penthouses, from thousands of Hughes’s own private memos stolen in 1974.

Drosnin, a reporter who tracked the documents down and spent years verifying them, lets Hughes speak in his own words: the germ-obsessed directives to his aides, the schemes to buy Las Vegas casinos and sway presidents, the fortune spent bending American politics to his will. The picture that emerges is both fascinating and disturbing — a brilliant, visionary empire-builder gradually consumed by paranoia and compulsion, running a secret empire from locked hotel rooms.

Part detective story, part character study, Citizen Hughes is the book that finally pulled back the curtain on one of the twentieth century’s great enigmas. For readers of biography, true crime, and American history alike, it remains the most intimate portrait of the man behind the myth.