Introduction

Love, lust, and fatal hatreds inside America's most exclusive enclave of wealth and privilege--Palm Beach. Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme devastated the eternally sunny world of Palm Beach, bringing down multimillionaires and destroying once-wealthy widows. The South Florida island and its rarified life suddenly found itself at the epicenter of the scandal, with this strange universe of wealth and privilege under an unrelenting spotlight. Now, in Madness Under the Royal Palms, Laurence Leamer shows us--as no one else has--this world of the megawealthy, which he calls "as hidden a place as I have ever resided." Digging deep, he hits a dark well of conflicting ambitions--right up to and including murder--much darker than the sky-blue weather and sunny Lily Pulitzer prints most of us associate with Palm Beach.

Editorial Review

Guest Reviewer: Meryl Gordon, Author of Mrs. Astor Regrets

Just the name--Palm Beach--conjures up an American fantasy of wealth, privilege and exclusivity. Laurence Leamer, in his well-written and entertaining new book, Madness Under the Royal Palms, offers up an inside look at this playground of the rich, and its under-class of social-climbing wannabes. Tracing the history of Palm Beach and its magnificent real estate, describing the fabulous parties, investigating some of the city's sordid secrets, Leamer's book provides a memorable, and at times haunting, portrayal of high society at a moment of transition, where things are often not what they seem.

Excerpt

No Excerpt Currently Available

Discussion Questions

No discussion questions at this time.

Weblinks

There are no web links at this time.

Book Club Recommendations

Recommended to book clubs by 0 of 1 members.

Member Reviews

Rate this book