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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * UPDATED TEXT WITH RESULTS OF THE CLARK ESTATE SETTLEMENT * NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Janet Maslin, The New York Times * When Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly sixty years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the nineteenth century with a twenty-first-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades. Though she owned palatial homes in California, New York, and Connecticut, why had she lived for twenty years in a simple hospital room, despite being in excellent health? Why were her valuables being sold off? Was she in control of her fortune, or controlled by those managing her money? Dedman has collaborated with Huguette Clark's cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr.
About the Author
When Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Bill Dedman noticed a grand estate in Connecticut that had sat empty for nearly sixty years, he had no idea that he was stumbling onto one of the greatest American stories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries--complete with copper barons, Gilded Age opulence, backdoor politics, and a reclusive 104-year-old heiress named Huguette Clark. His series of stories about the Clarks became the most popular feature in the history of NBC's news web site, topping 110 million page views.
Bill received the 1989 Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting for his work for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He got his start in journalism at 16 as a copy boy at The Chattanooga Times, and has written for The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and The New York Times. After eight years at NBC News, Bill moved in 2014 to Newsday, the newspaper on Long Island, N.Y., as a senior writer.
