An engaging story about wealth, entitlement, property rights, change, loss, and pain.
A swift account of the history of Malibu, “a rugged ranch in the middle of nowhere” that became “a global symbol of fame and fortune.”
Reuters senior reporter Randall (Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep, 2012) is interested in briskness and conciseness; this is no dense scholarly history. He begins with a quick overview of the entire text, then proceeds with the story of Frederick Rindge (1857-1905), an ambitious Harvard student who, throughout his life, had to battle the lingering effects of rheumatic fever but shared with Theodore Roosevelt the exercise ethos and love of the outdoors that enabled him to live much longer than he otherwise might have. Rindge, as Randall shows us, had a gift for seeing financial opportunities and seizing them—though it didn’t hurt that he began with an inheritance worth some $140 million in today’s currency. He met and very quickly married Rhoda May Knight (who always went by “May”), and off they went to Los Angeles, where he quickly became one of the major movers in that community’s transition to a megalopolis. He bought a huge ranch, once a major Spanish land grant, in the area now called Malibu (an abbreviation of the ranch’s original Spanish name), developed it, and strived mightily—as did his widow, for decades—to keep it both private and pristine. Obviously, they lost. They battled homesteaders, trespassers, and, eventually, the local and national governments, the final stroke being the construction of the Pacific Coast Highway. The Depression wiped out May’s fortune. The author communicates a keen sympathy for the Rindges, praising Frederick for his philanthropy back in his Massachusetts hometown and May for her virtual monomania about the property. As “progress” arrives in the area, the author wants us to feel sorrow for the folks with multiple mansions and vast fortunes.
An engaging story about wealth, entitlement, property rights, change, loss, and pain.Pub Date: March 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-393-24099-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
Ably following his National Book Awardnominated biography of John Butler Yeats (Prodigal Father, not reviewed), Murphy creates a detailed portrait of the Yeats family that establishes it as one rivaling the Jameses for genius. ``We are not a normal family,'' confessed Yeats once to a correspondent, understating the matter. Most of the poet's biographers underestimate his family in regard to his own mythopoetic personality. His father was a brilliant conversationalist and a barrister turned bohemian painter; his elder sister, Susan (Lily), a talented embroiderer and textile designer; his younger sister, Elizabeth (Lollie), a skilled printer; and his brother, Jack, a superb painter with an international reputation. When John Butler Yeats moved his family from Ireland to London to start his painting career, his children lost their idyllic Sligo home, but Murphy stresses how this experience of straitened means and family isolation nonetheless contributed to the development of their talents. Willie and Lily grew closer and entered into William Morris's poetic and decorative household, and Lollie learned art instruction and printing. While Willie established himself as a poet with the likes of George (A.E.) Russell, Lady Gregory, and Ezra Pound, his sisters formed the Cuala Industries, where Lollie's press brought out editions of Willie and his Celtic twilight compatriots and where Lily's designs generated a stir. As Murphy makes clear with a round-up of family feuding, the Yeatses' dispositions drew unequally from both sides of their Anglo-Irish heritage: Willie, for all his dreaminess, would haughtily direct the publishing project at Cuala (which he kept afloat financially), thus infuriating the egocentric Lollie, who in turn would bear down on her sister and Cuala partner, while Jack, working apart, became the most reserved of the siblings. Murphy, if neglecting the wider artistic developments of the Irish revival around them, exhaustively chronicles the family's multifaceted creative personalities. (101 illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8156-0301-0
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Syracuse Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1994
A rehash of the life of Jackie as she turns 65: a collection of old news, non-news, and tabloid analysis. Kennedy chronicler David (Good Ted, Bad Ted: The Two Faces of Edward M. Kennedy, 1993) takes us on a walking tour of Jackie's Manhattan. Did you know, for example, that Jackie jogs clockwise around the Central Park reservoir instead of counterclockwise like the other runners (to avoid photographers on her route)? Or that she buys her sweatpants at the Gap at 86th and Madison? Although Jackie had a facelift in 1979, her hands have prominent veins and ``brown and yellow blotches of varying sizes.'' It can't be any fun churning out copy about a subject who does not give interviews. David has spent valuable time in the library and has interviewed colleagues, servants, tradespeople, and Kennedy relatives to get even the smell of a scoop, but his pickings are slim. This is a textbook on how to make short, impersonal interviews seem like page-one stories. As if we were reading a Christmas letter, we learn that Mrs. Onassis exercises regularly, gets plenty of sleep, and eats healthfully. Her newest roommate is chubby, married diamond merchant Maurice Tempelsman. She still doesn't get along with the other Kennedy women (``They were clam chowder, she was lobster bisque''), and she vacations on Martha's Vineyard, where she had a disagreement with the Wampanoag Indians. (Apparently, Wampanoag chief Moshup and his wife, Old Squant, are buried on her private beach.) Regrettably she has been diagnosed with lymphoma, but the prognosis is optimistic. The children and grandchildren are healthy, and John John is no longer dating Madonna. To be read under the hair dryer, but not really thrilling enough to take home. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) (First printing of 50,000; first serial to New Woman)
Pub Date: July 28, 1994
ISBN: 1-55972-234-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Birch Lane Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1994
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