Synopses & Reviews
Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme has devastated the eternally sunny world of Palm Beach, bringing down multimillionaires and destroying once wealthy widows. At the center of the scandal is the isolated, insulated winter home of the mega wealthy. Suddenly, everyone in America is talking about the South Florida island and the rarified life so apart from the rest of America. Everyone wants to know what are the deepest truths of this strange, exotic universe of wealth and privilege. In Madness Under the Royal Palms, Laurence Leamer has the answers. It took him fifteen years to get them, and to expose the inner life and drama of the wealthy as it has never been exposed before. It is an often shocking, scandalous book that will forever change not only the way Palm Beach is viewed but the life of wealth and privilege in America. Leave it to Leamer, the bestselling author known for getting the inside story on his elusive subjects, to take us behind the walls of America's most exclusive enclave of wealth and privilege. In Madness, Leamer tells a braided story involving a socialite determined to make it to the top of Palm Beach society, two infamous murders, and a powerful society reporter. As a backdrop, Leamer tells the story of the clash between old money and new, religion and status, and the love, lust, and fatal hatreds that determine the shape of a fiercely protected society. The cast of characters include trophy wives, trophy husbands, purported gigolos, glamorous widows, a pioneering gay couple, a wildly irreverent event planner, a sociopathic multimillionaire, and an elegant society queen. For a hundred years Palm Beach has been a fantasy land nurtured by, and maintained for, the megawealthy. In the end, Leamer's tale of money, murder and mad pretension reveals a darker strain. Uncovering that strain, as the author himself writes, turned into as fascinating, in some cases as shocking, and always as unexpected a journey as I have ever taken.
Review
"Leamer, who's lived in Palm Beach since '94, knows his stuff. . . . Madness offers buckets of heart-warming Schadenfreude for all."--The Washington Post
Review
"Now, as unflinching as Dante, the irrepressible Laurence Leamer . . . has turned his attention to the society in which he luxuriates most winters. Social lepidopterist that he is, in the 300-plus pages of Madness Under the Royal Palms Leamer pins out that gaudy, conflicted community like cornered butterflies fluttering, hectic and doomed."--St. Petersburg Times
Review
"Leamer meticulously paints the kind of frenzied desire to belong to the club, literally and metaphorically, that led people to abandon most principles."--Bloomberg
Synopsis
The New York Times bestselling history of the glamour and debauchery of the ultra-wealthy Palm Beach community--from The Breakers to Trump's Mar-a-Lago.For more than a hundred years, Palm Beach has been an exclusive and exotic universe of wealth and privilege in America. And until Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme devastated its eternally sunny world, the reality of this affluent enclave has rarely been exposed to outsiders.
Now, in
Madness Under the Royal Palms, resident insider Laurence Leamer reveals the secrets and scandals of this South Florida island via a cast of characters that includes social climbers, trophy wives, sugar daddies, glamorous widows and their "escorts," sociopathic multimillionaires, and elegant society queens. This summer, dive into the unbelievable true story of love, lust, money, and murder in an uniquely American paradise.
Synopsis
In an account that combines the eccentricity of Midnight in the garden of good and evil with the pure, cross ambition of Philistines at the Hedgerow, Laurence Leamer tells a story of money, murder and mad pretension inside what has long been America's most exclusive--and surreal--super rich enclave: Palm Beach.
Synopsis
Like the bestsellers "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" and "Philistines at the Hedgerow," this work allows readers an unprecedented look inside the lives of the rich and eccentric who live in what may the most expensive four miles of real estate in the world: Palm Beach, Florida.
Synopsis
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.
About the Author
Laurence Leamer is the author of twelve books, including Make-Believe: The Life of Nancy and Ronald Reagan, The Kennedy Women, The Kennedy Men, King of the Night: The Life of Johnny Carson and Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger. A member of the Peace Corps and a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism, Leamer was on staff at Newsweek, and has written for The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Playboy and many other publications.