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The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke Sallie Bingham.

The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke Sallie Bingham.
Item Information
Shelf Location Collection Volume Ref. Branch Status Due Date Res.
B/DUK
Biography   Old Bar . Available .  
. Catalogue Record 383509 ItemInfo Beginning of record . Catalogue Record 383509 ItemInfo Top of page .
Catalogue Information
Field name Details
ISBN 9780374142599
Shelf Location B/DUK
Biography
Author Bingham, Sallie
Title The Silver Swan : In Search of Doris Duke / Sallie Bingham.
Publication Details New York ::
2020.
©2020. Farrar, Straus and Giroux,,
Collation xiii, 316 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : : illustrations (black and white), portraits ; ; 24 cm. ;
Abstract/Summary A bold portrait of Doris Duke, the defiant and notorious tobacco heiress who was perhaps the greatest modern woman philanthropist. In The Silver Swan, Sallie Bingham chronicles one of the great underexplored lives of the twentieth century and the very archetype of the modern woman. "Don't touch that girl, she'll burn your fingers," FBI director J. Edgar Hoover once said about Doris Duke, the inheritor of James Buchanan Duke's billion-dollar tobacco fortune. During her lifetime, she would be blamed for scorching many, including her mother and various ex-lovers. She established her first foundation when she was twenty-one; cultivated friendships with the likes of Jackie Kennedy, Imelda Marcos, and Michael Jackson; flaunted interracial relationships; and adopted a thirty-two year-old woman she believed to be the reincarnation of her deceased daughter. This is also the story of the great houses she inhabited, including the classically proportioned limestone mansion on Fifth Avenue, the sprawling Duke Farms in New Jersey, the Gilded Age mansion Rough Point in Newport, Shangri La in Honolulu, and Falcon's Lair overlooking Beverly Hills. Even though Duke was the subject of constant scrutiny, little beyond the tabloid accounts of her behavior has been publicly known. In 2012, when eight hundred linear feet of her personal papers were made available, Sallie Bingham set out to probe her identity. She found an alluring woman whose life was forged in the Jazz Age, who was not only an early war correspondent but also an environmentalist, a surfer, a collector of Islamic art, a savvy businesswoman who tripled her father's fortune, and a major philanthropist with wide-ranging passions from dance to historic preservation to human rights. In The Silver Swan, Bingham is especially interested in dissecting the stereotypes that have defined Duke's story while also confronting the disturbing questions that cleave to her legacy.
Subject Duke, Doris, -- 1912-1993
Heiresses -- United States -- Biography
Rich people -- United States -- Biography
Women philanthropists -- United States -- Biography
Celebrities -- United States -- Biography
United States -- Biography.
Biographies
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Catalogue Information 383509 Beginning of record . Catalogue Information 383509 Top of page .
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