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The Last Mrs. Astor
- A New York Story
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
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Publisher's summary
"Kiernan's sharp-eyed biography brings back a woman who, far into her 90s, relished the dance of life."—O, The Oprah Magazine
This biography, based on firsthand knowledge and interviews with Mrs. Astor's friends and the heads of New York's great cultural institutions, gives us back the woman so loved and admired. At the age of fifty-one, Brooke Astor wedded the notoriously ill-tempered Vincent Astor, who died in 1959.
In a highly publicized courtroom battle, she fought off an attempt to break Vincent's will, which left $67 million to the Vincent Astor Foundation. As the foundation's president, Mrs. Astor would use this legacy to benefit New York City. She would personally visit every grant applicant and charm anyone she met. At her hundredth birthday, princes and presidents honored her, but in 2006, a grandson petitioned the courts to have his father removed as Brooke's guardian. Once again, an Astor court battle became the stuff of headlines.
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Alexander Larman completes his acclaimed Windsor family trilogy, using rare and previously unseen documents to illuminate their unique family dynamic. Through his chronicling of events like the Royal Wedding, George VI’s death and the discovery of the Duke of Windsor’s treacherous activities in WWII, Larman paints a vivid portrait of the end of one sovereign’s reign and the beginning of another’s that heralded a new Elizabethan Age which would bring power and glory back to a monarchy desperately in need of it.
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Yawn
- By Robin on 05-02-24
By: Alexander Larman
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The Rulebreaker
- The Life and Times of Barbara Walters
- By: Susan Page
- Narrated by: Susan Page
- Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Rulebreaker, Susan Page conducts 150 interviews and extensive archival research to discover that Walters was driven to keep herself and her family afloat after her mercurial and famous impresario father attempted suicide. But she never lost the fear of an impending catastrophe, which is what led her to ask for things no woman had ever asked for before, to ignore the rules of misogynistic culture, to outcompete her most ferocious competitors, and to protect her complicated marriages and love life from scrutiny.
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Very well written and very interesting
- By Anonymous User on 04-29-24
By: Susan Page
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The First Shot
- A Prequel
- By: Liv Constantine
- Narrated by: Suzanne Elise Freeman
- Length: 2 hrs and 35 mins
- Original Recording
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In this gripping prequel to the blockbuster best seller and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick The Last Mrs. Parrish, listeners will discover exactly how Amber Patterson transformed from small-town girl to master manipulator - after all, practice makes perfect.
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I was not disappointed!
- By KKEC Reads on 11-14-20
By: Liv Constantine
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When Women Ran Fifth Avenue
- Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion
- By: Julie Satow
- Narrated by: Karen Murray
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In When Women Ran Fifth Avenue, journalist Julie Satow draws back the curtain on three visionaries who took great risks, forging new paths for the women who followed in their footsteps. This stylish account, rich with personal drama and trade secrets, captures the department store in all its glitz, decadence, and fun, and showcases the women who made that beautifully curated world go round.
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Read like a text book for fashion students.
- By JACKI on 06-24-24
By: Julie Satow
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A Very Private School
- A Memoir
- By: Charles Spencer
- Narrated by: Charles Spencer
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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A Very Private School offers a clear-eyed, first-hand account of a culture of cruelty at the school Charles Spencer attended in his youth and provides important insights into an antiquated boarding system. Drawing on the memories of many of his schoolboy contemporaries, as well as his own letters and diaries from the time, he reflects on the hopelessness and abandonment he felt at aged eight, viscerally describing the intense pain of homesickness and the appalling inescapability of it all.
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SO INTERESTING, SO UPSETTING, SO BELIEVABLE!
- By Mary Burnight on 03-15-24
By: Charles Spencer
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Vanderbilt
- The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
- By: Anderson Cooper, Katherine Howe
- Narrated by: Anderson Cooper
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling author and journalist Anderson Cooper teams with New York Times best-selling historian and novelist Katherine Howe to chronicle the rise and fall of a legendary American dynasty - his mother’s family, the Vanderbilts.
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Interesting Approach to a Well Known History
- By HistoryNerd on 09-24-21
By: Anderson Cooper, and others