"A riveting on-the-edge-of-your-seat story about the famous 1970s Patty Hearst-style kidnapping of Baron Edouard "Wado" Empain, juxtaposed with the story of his famous grandfather, the first Baron, who built the Paris Metro, all with the fascinating alternating backgrounds of both Belle Epoque and 1970s high-fashion Paris. What does it take to create a dynasty? What does it take to keep one alive? And what does it take to keep one man alive, once the society surrounding wealth, power, and influence in 1970s France begins to crumble, and society begins to question it all? Beginning in 1896, the first Baron Empain built both the Paris Metro and an empire from France to Belgian to Egypt that his grandson, Edouard (aka Wado), would inherit, diversify, and expand in the 1960s and '70s. But by 1978, the world had turned against industry and wealth, with high-profile kidnappings like Patty Hearst's happening around the globe. Alan Callioll, then a small-time gangster who had grown up in vastly different circumstances but was no less brilliant, saw an opportunity. He and his confederates executed a successful kidnapping, snatching Wado off the Paris streets, sure that they'd get the 2 million francs they demanded in ransom. But nothing unfolded as the team, or Wado himself, expected. Would Wado's company pay? How much was a leader, and a person, worth? And could the French police outsmart the kidnappers? The roots of each question lay deep in the past, back into the first Baron Empain's history, Wado's own parents and childhood, and the overall understanding of how the city that the Empain family built just might not need them anymore"-- Provided by publisher
"Was the world's wealthiest woman--Liliane Bettencourt--heir to an estimated thirty-six-billion-dollar L'Oreal fortune, the victim of a con man? Or were her own family the real villains? This riveting narrative tells the real-life, shocking story behind the cause celebre that has captivated both France and the world. Liliane Bettencourt is the world's richest woman and the eleventh wealthiest person on the planet, as of 2016. But at ninety-four, she's embroiled in an incredible controversy that has dominated the headlines and ensnared a former president of France in the controversy. Why? [It is] thanks to an artist and photographer named Francois-Marie Banier, who was given hundreds of millions of dollars by Liliane. Liliane's daughter, Francoise, considers Banier a con man and filed a lawsuit against him, but Banier has a far different story to tell. It's all become Europe's biggest scandal in years, uncovering a shadowy corporate history, buried World War II secrets, illicit political payoffs, and much more. Written by Tom Sancton, a Vanity Fair contributor and former Time correspondent currently living in France, The Bettencourt Affair is part courtroom drama; part upstairs-downstairs tale; part business narrative of a glamorous global company with past Nazi connections; and part character-driven story of a complex, fascinating family and the intruder who nearly tore it apart."--Provided by publisher.
A Buffet for Scandal Aficionados...[Sancton] is an excellent straight-up
reporter, and he has dug deeply into the many, many elements that complicate
this story.-Janet Maslin, The New York Times Juicy...the very picture of un
grand scandale about the world's richest woman.-Vanity Fair [A] riveting page-
turner chronicling this sweeping Tolstoyan saga...In gripping but
unsensational prose, [Sancton] brings the debacle alive in its many
dimensions, recreating not merely the lurid courtroom drama, but capturing
'the ineffable sadness at its heart.'-NPR An intensely reported account of
power, politics, persuasion and the dark family secrets of the ultra-
wealthy.-New York Daily News the book that has emerged from [Sancton's]
reporting on the case is surely the definitive account...riveting.-Wall Street
Journal Money, glamour, and scandal are often the key ingredients of a great
story-especially when they're true.-Real Simple A juicy chronicle of France's
richest scandal...A well-researched, crisply written, and entertaining story
of family, greed, wealth, and the complex relations among them.-Kirkus Reviews
Although this tale seems destined for HBO or Hollywood, to bill this a mere
'family drama' belies the staggering depth with which Sancton portrays his
subjects, whose motivations, desires, and downfalls are 'so difficult to judge
according to a moral code based on right and wrong, black and white, good and
evil.' A natural for book clubs, which will drain a French cellar's worth of
wine while appreciating Sancton's meticulous research and discussing this
unbelievable cast of characters.-Booklist (starred review) This true story of
the elderly billionaire, the artist to whom she gave a fortune, and the family
that claims it's all been a big con, is proof that truth is stranger-or at
least makes better poolside reading.-Town & Country There is no comparable
work on the Bettencourt scandal, only interviews and articles, making this
highly recommended and pleasurable read a mix of luring tabloid fare and
professionally researched courtroom and political drama.-Library Journal
(starred review) The story of this convoluted war of wills (pun intended),
told with skill by former Time Paris bureau chief Tom Sancton in The
Bettencourt Affair, features a cast of characters pulled straight from a
Tolstoy novel.-BookPage A longtime reporter on a foreign desk, Tom Sancton
knows Paris and has done his homework...The Bettencourt Affair is a devilishly
engaging immersion into a world few of us can imagine.-Shelf Awareness This
book has it all! Money, class, art, greed, intrigue, seduction, betrayal, and
politics. It reads like a novel-a racy and intense thriller-but it's all true.
With amazing reporting and wonderful writing, Tom Sancton brings alive the
drama of the richest woman in the world, the powerful minister she married,
their intellectual daughter, and the audacious artist who may have siphoned
off a fortune. Their battles shook France and will fascinate readers.-Walter
Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs The Bettencourt Affair reveals the far-reaching
tentacles of a sensational family squabble over the $40-billion L'Oréal
fortune. The aging cosmetics heiress gave hundreds of millions of dollars to
her protégé, who was then charged with criminal manipulation by the woman's
embittered daughter and convicted at a trial that also entangled French
President Nicholas Sarkozy, a labor minister and others. It's an eye-popping,
page-turning read.-John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and
Evil and The City of Falling Angels A riveting, dishy account of one of
France's wealthiest families, whose Olympian grasp reaches scandalously deep
into the French political world and the government itself. No one who reads
this intimate tale of materialism and dangerous liaisons-peppered with
political stars and so steeped in paranoia that even a butler makes
surreptitious re
