The Beneficiary
Fortune, Misfortune, and the Story of My Father
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Narrated by:
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Janny Scott
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By:
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Janny Scott
About this listen
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
"[A] poignant addition to the literature of moneyed glamour and its inevitable tarnish and decay...like something out of Fitzgerald or Waugh." (The New Yorker)
A parable for the new age of inequality: part family history, part detective story, part history of a vanishing class, and a vividly compelling exploration of the degree to which an inheritance - financial, cultural, genetic - conspired in one person's self-destruction.
Land, houses, and money tumbled from one generation to the next on the 800-acre estate built by Scott's investment banker great-grandfather on Philadelphia's Main Line. There was an obligation to protect it, a license to enjoy it, a duty to pass it on - but it was impossible to know in advance how all that extraordinary good fortune might influence the choices made over a lifetime.
In this warmly felt tale of an American family's fortunes, journalist Janny Scott excavates the rarefied world that shaped her charming, unknowable father, Robert Montgomery Scott, and provides an incisive look at the weight of inheritance, the tenacity of addiction, and the power of buried secrets.
Some beneficiaries flourished, like Scott's grandmother, Helen Hope Scott, a socialite and celebrated horsewoman said to have inspired Katherine Hepburn's character in the play and Academy Award-winning film The Philadelphia Story. For others, including the author's father, she concludes, the impact was more complex.
Bringing her journalistic talents, light touch, and crystalline prose to this powerful story of a child's search to understand a parent's puzzling end, Scott also raises questions about our new Gilded Age. New fortunes are being amassed, new estates are being born. Does anyone wonder how it will all play out, 100 years hence?
©2019 Janny Scott (P)2019 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Flair is in the DNA. As attentive to outré details as to psychological turmoil, Scott makes the most of the suspense built into her story. Her father, having promised Scott in her 20s that she would inherit his many diaries, made her hunt long and hard for them after his death in 2005. The bequest was brilliant: A man in unhappy thrall to a place lured his daughter further and further in - and she escaped with priceless insight into its, and his, hidden depths." (The Atlantic)
"Fascinating for the painful personal legacies it uncovers. At the same time, it is also compelling for the parallels it draws between an earlier age of inequality and our own and the questions it raises about how contemporary stories of new-rich families 'will play out, one hundred years hence.'" (Kirkus Reviews)
"Compulsively readable...a rare combination of wit, empathy, candor, and shrewd sleuthing, [The Beneficiary] is a multigenerational story that encompasses the Gilded Age, great wealth and two World Wars, suicide and secret affairs, hidden diaries and the life-long impact of alcohol. The world of wealth and privilege Scott recreates so vividly may be hard for the rest of us to imagine, but everyone will recognize the flawed but fascinating human beings at its heart. Not to be missed.” (Geoffrey C. Ward, author of the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning, Pulitzer Prize-finalist A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, 1905-1928)
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Fascinating, But Know This...
- By Karen K on 04-08-15
By: Bill Dedman, and others
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The Last Castle
- The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation’s Largest Home
- By: Denise Kiernan
- Narrated by: Denise Kiernan
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Orphaned at a young age, Edith Stuyvesant Dresser claimed lineage from one of New York's best known families. She grew up in Newport and Paris, and her engagement and marriage to George Vanderbilt was one of the most watched events of Gilded Age society. But none of this prepared her to be mistress of Biltmore House. Before their marriage, the wealthy and bookish Vanderbilt had dedicated his life to creating a spectacular European-style estate on 125,000 acres of North Carolina wilderness.
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Very factual
- By Jennifer on 11-28-17
By: Denise Kiernan
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American Ghost
- A Family's Haunted Past in the Desert Southwest
- By: Hannah Nordhaus
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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The dark-eyed woman in the long, black gown was first seen in the 1970s, standing near a fireplace. She was sad and translucent, present and absent at once. Strange things began to happen in the Santa Fe hotel where she was seen. Gas fireplaces turned off and on without anyone touching a switch. Glasses flew off shelves. And in one second-floor suite with a canopy bed and arched windows looking out to the mountains, guests reported alarming events.
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A true American tale
- By Cleo Colorado on 05-29-15
By: Hannah Nordhaus
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Reading My Father
- A Memoir
- By: Alexandra Styron
- Narrated by: Alexandra Styron
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Alexandra Styron's parents—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sophie’s Choice and his political activist wife, Rose—were, for half a century, leading players on the world’s cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her father’s brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind. Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artist’s life. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written with humor, compassion, and grace.
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William Styron Ranks...
- By Douglas on 12-22-13
By: Alexandra Styron
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Lady Bird
- A Biography of Mrs. Johnson
- By: Jan Jarboe Russell
- Narrated by: Andrea Gallo
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
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A revealing biography of Lady Bird Johnson with startling new insights into her marriage to Lyndon Baines Johnson and her unexpectedly strong impact on his presidency. Long obscured by her husband's shadow, Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson emerges in this first comprehensive biography as a figure of surprising influence and the centering force for LBJ, a man who suffered from extreme mood swings and desperately needed someone to help control his darker impulses.
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Do not waste an audible credit
- By Sandra B. on 10-15-23
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Black Diamonds
- The Downfall of an Aristocratic Dynasty and the Fifty Years That Changed England
- By: Catherine Bailey
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 15 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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When the sixth Earl Fitzwilliam died in 1902, he left behind the second largest estate in 20th-century England, valued at more than three billion dollars in today's money - a lifeline to the tens of thousands of people who worked either in the family's coal mines or on their expansive estate. The earl also left behind four sons, and the family line seemed assured. But was it?
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Could use a good editor...
- By Phyllis on 04-30-18
By: Catherine Bailey
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The Sugar King of Havana
- The Rise and Fall of Julio Lobo, Cuba's Last Tycoon
- By: John Paul Rathbone
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Fifty years after the Cuban revolution, the legendary wealth of the sugar magnate Julio Lobo remains emblematic of a certain way of life that came to an abrupt end when Fidel Castro marched into Havana. Known in his day as the King of Sugar, Lobo was for decades the most powerful force in the world sugar market, controlling vast swaths of the island's sugar interests.
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VERY INFORMATIVE
- By Terry on 03-26-12
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Franklin and Lucy
- President Roosevelt, Mrs. Rutherfurd, and the Other Remarkable Women in His Life
- By: Joseph E. Persico
- Narrated by: Ted Barker
- Length: 17 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt was arguably the greatest figure of the 20th century. While FDR's official circle was predominantly male, it was his relationships with women - particularly with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd - that most vividly bring to light the human being beneath this towering statesman.
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Franklin and Lucy
- By Connie's on 03-06-09
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In the Great Green Room
- The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown
- By: Amy Gary
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The extraordinary life of the woman behind the beloved children's classics Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny comes alive in this fascinating biography of Margaret Wise Brown. Margaret's books have sold millions of copies all over the world, but few people know that she was at the center of a children's book publishing revolution.
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Excruciatingly boring
- By Melissa S. on 01-31-19
By: Amy Gary
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Flesh Wounds
- By: Richard Glover
- Narrated by: Richard Glover
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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A mother who invented her past, a father who was often absent, a son who wondered if this could really be his family...Richard Glover's favourite dinner-party game is called 'Who's Got the Weirdest Parents?' It's a game he always thinks he'll win. There was his mother, a deluded snob who made up large swathes of her past and who ran away with Richard's English teacher, a Tolkien devotee, nudist and stuffed toy collector.
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Such a Meaningful Reflection
- By Awarenessing on 11-28-15
By: Richard Glover
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The City of Falling Angels
- By: John Berendt
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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The author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil returns to give us an intimate look at the "magic, mystery, and decadence" of the city of Venice and its inhabitants.
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Do Yourself a Favor and Skip This Book!
- By AUDIBLE on 10-08-05
By: John Berendt
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They Left Us Everything
- A Memoir
- By: Plum Johnson
- Narrated by: Pilar Witherspoon
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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After almost 20 years of caring for elderly parents - first for their senile father and then for their cantankerous 93-year-old mother - author Plum Johnson and her three younger brothers have finally fallen to their middle-aged knees with conflicted feelings of grief and relief. Now they must empty and sell the beloved family home, 23 rooms bulging with history, antiques, and oxygen tanks. Plum thought, How tough will that be? I know how to buy garbage bags. But the task turns out to be much harder and more rewarding than she ever imagined.
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Thought provoking
- By Margaret on 05-02-17
By: Plum Johnson
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Beer Money
- A Memoir of Privilege and Loss
- By: Frances Stroh
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Frances Stroh's earliest memories are ones of great privilege: shopping trips to London and New York, lunches served by black-tied waiters at the Regency Hotel, and a house filled with precious antiques, which she was forbidden to touch. Established in Detroit in 1850, by 1984 the Stroh Brewing Company had become the largest private beer fortune in America and a brand emblematic of the American dream itself; while Stroh was coming of age, the Stroh family fortune was estimated to be worth $700 million.
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Beer boring
- By Richard E. Putt Jr. on 05-22-16
By: Frances Stroh
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Where I Was From
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Gabrielle De Cuir
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In her moving and insightful new book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history and ours. A native Californian, Didion applies her scalpel-like intelligence to the state’s ethic of ruthless self-sufficiency in order to examine that ethic’s often tenuous relationship to reality. Combining history and reportage, memoir and literary criticism, Where I Was From explores California’s romances with land and water; its unacknowledged debts to railroads, aerospace, and big government; the disjunction between its code of individualism and its fetish for prisons.
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California belongs to Joan Didion.
- By Darwin8u on 11-04-15
By: Joan Didion
What listeners say about The Beneficiary
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 01-22-23
Engaging History
This is an engaging history of an era of style and wealth many of us have only glimpsed but now can satisfy curiosity through Ms. Scott’s forthright account of her family’s and her own experiences. This is particularly gratifying if the reader has connections to Philadelphia and environs.
The author's narration is as engaging as her literary style. I appreciate her having shared so personally.
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- W. Buchanan
- 04-19-19
Remarkable Story!
I purchased the audio version of this book on a hunch. That hunch turned out correct!
First, the story is very well written. Second Ms. Scott's narration performance was spot on perfect. Lastly, I have lived on Mount Desert Island, Maine for 35 years; where the Scott family had owned a "summer cottage" for several years. Each summer, my wife interacts with one of the Scott family members.
All of the above unfolded as a delightful surprise, based on a hunch!
I am going to listen to the story again!
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4 people found this helpful
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- ADB
- 01-16-20
Poignant Portrait
Outstanding biographical accomplishment as well as a gratifying listening experience. Janny Scott writes and narrates the story of her father’s life beautifully. Thoroughly enjoyed and was moved by this book.
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- Nicholas H. Ryan
- 06-17-22
A glorious adventure through the lives of privileged
Janny tells a story that ignites the imagination with personalities revealed through a family history that mirrors the rise and fall of American successes. She honestly reveals foibles that others might bury, and leaves us with an affection for her father that touches the heart. You will come to love Robert, Hope, Edgar, and the multitude of people who inhabited Ardrossan Farms as that gilded age slipped away. That the Montgomerys staved off reality and lived a grand life well beyond their peers is a testament to an ambition and adherence to principle in short supply. Partake in this journey, Janny is meticulous and enticing in her telling - you will come to love every moment as if they were your own family.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Theresa Sage
- 05-10-19
Thank you!
Thank you for the brutally honest story of your family, told in an intimate yet objective tone.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Big Time Reader
- 01-14-20
It's a Good Read
I live in the Philadelphia area and interested in social history. Good story from the view of one sibling. I think if the book were written by her brother or his wife we would get a much different portrait of the man. I put Robert Montgomery Scott in the category of Thatcher Longstreath and other Philadelphia WASP personalities. Interesting people to have drinks with but badly flawed people and leaders.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Privatebuyer
- 04-01-22
He was admired by so many
What a wonderful book. You gave us a wonderful sense of the personalities in your family. I appreciate how you have woven the landscape changes and social changes over time together. Not all sweetness and light. No made for Hollywood sunsets either.
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- Kindle Customer
- 05-09-19
Historical and timely
This book is an interesting intersection of American history, family memoir, and a case study of wealth and its influence across generations. The author strikes a commendable tone of objectivity in sharing her family's gilded age roots and patrician story. She is also an engaging narrator and made the material more intimate and accessible. I enjoyed the book.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Mia Ritter
- 10-05-19
Incredible and Moving Story, Well Narrated
This story is incredible. The author talks about her own family in such an honest and meaningful way. The story is one that many can relate to, even if they do not come from inherited wealth. I highly recommend listening.
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- NFox
- 06-08-19
Buy A Hard Copy
I have been fascinated by Androsson from the minute I realized “The Philadelphia Story” was based on Hope Scott. I heard about this book listening to a WHYY podcast interview with Janny Scott.
This is a large family. Janny Scott’s voice is clear and easy to listen to. However, on regular speed, she reads so quickly it is difficult to absorb details. Slowing the speed down makes it a very unpleasant listening experience.
I intend to buy a hard copy of this book. I am hoping it is loaded with photos.
I expect i would give the paper version of this story five stars. It just does not translate well as an audiobook.
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7 people found this helpful