The fate of Brooke Astor, the endearing philanthropist with the storied name, has generated worldwide headlines since her grandson Philip sued his father, Anthony Marshall, in 2006, alleging mistreatment of Brooke. Shortly after her death in 2007, Anthony was indicted on charges of looting her estate. New York journalist Meryl Gordon has interviewed not only the elite of Mrs. Astor's social circle but also the large staff who cared for her during her declining years. The result is the behind-the-headlines story of the Astor empire’s unraveling, filled with never-before-reported scenes. This powerful, poignant saga takes the reader inside the gilded gates of an American dynasty to tell of three generations’ worth of longing and missed opportunities and is filled with secrets of the sort that have engaged Americans from the era of Edith Wharton to the more recent days of Truman Capote. Even in this territory of privilege, no riches can put things right once they’ve been torn asunder. Mrs. Astor Regrets is an American epic of the bonds of money, morality, and social position.
Such an interesting read! Mrs. Astor Regrets is the story of the hidden betrayals of a family who may have been beyond reproach. If you like entertainment news you will love this true story about a family that generated headlines across the globe as the famous family fell apart in the public eye.
This book covers the behind the scenes story of the Astor empire falling apart. This book will captivate you with it's tales of morality, the grip of money, scandal and social position. Very interesting and very hard to put down.
It is nice to be completely surprised by a book and I was surprised by Meryl Gordon's "Mrs Astor Regrets." When I selected it, I was mildly interested in the "last" Mrs. Astor. However, after reading some heavy and dense books immediately prior, I was more interested in reading something "fluffy." In the first few chapters, I thought I had my fluff chock-full with name dropping (Nancy Reagan, Henry Kissiger, Oscar de la Reta, the Rockefeller brothers, etc.) but something was lurking just under the surface.
I was sure the name dropping would annoy me and that, as a result, I would not care to finish the book. Yet, Gordon promised more substance and I believed in her. As it turns out, the name dropping of the first two chapters was a device to get the reader's head swimming, making him dizzy with the ridiculous amount of wealth and privilege that was involved and thus, setting the stage for a powerful story.
For those prospective readers looking for a biography of Brooke Astor, this is not it. Gordon does offer a biographical sketch of Astor but its purpose is to tell the real story - that of the very public Guardianship petition, her death, and the subsequent criminal indictment of her son Tony Marshall and his lawyer Phillip Morrisey.
An indictment is not a verdict of guilt but it is an accusation of guilt and what Marshall and Morrisey are accused of is quite serious. Marshall is accused of stealing millions of dollars from his mother while serving both as her employee and exercising her power of attorney. Marshall is also accused of forging codicils to Astor's will. What is remarkable is the amount of money at issue here.
Imagine the temptation as a child when your mother gave you 5 dollars to buy milk at the corner store. She placed trust in you to both buy the milk and to return to her the change from buying the milk. Now, did you ALWAYS return home with the change or did you sometimes buy candy for yourself? Your mother was in no position to stop you if you did buy candy. Marshall was in a somewhat analogous position acting as power of attorney, except instead of $5, we're talking about $187 million dollars. It is one thing to have feet of clay and avoid temptation, it is quite another thing to do so when those feet are awash with millions of dollars.
By the end of the book, Gordon had me completely off-balance. The dizzying name-dropping of the beginning was replaced by the stark reality that anyone, whether rich or poor, is susceptible to suffer from a breach of another's breach of fiduciary duty; the pain, however, is truly intense when that fiduciary duty belongs to a mother, a father, a son, a daughter, or any close family member. In the end, Gordon delivers a magnificent shock to the senses with this cautionary tale of elder abuse.
First off, I guess I should say that I don't like this as much as some other reviewers. Maybe I'm not enough of a gossip-column addict to be impressed by all the well-known names dropped here -- and there ARE lots of them. So what! Our lives don't count any more or less because of the number of celebrities whose first names we drop.
I seriously wonder how satisfying Brooke Astor's life was to her. She had access to piles of money and lots of well-known people (many of whom wanted their share of it). She also was involved, at least financially, with a number of good causes -- was she personally involved? I'm not sure we can tell from this book. The money doesn't mean so much personally if there isn't a personal committment to the cause. I find little enlightenment about Mrs. Astor from the book on this score. But then, maybe I'm expecting too much from the book. And it doesn't claim to be a biography.
The whole mess with son Tony Marshall is a family problem not shared by many; but if you like that sort of thing, read at least the ending of a biography of Doris Duke -- here you'll find the servants and medical staff wrestling one another over her wealth and re-writing her wills every chance they got.
As someone once said, the rich really aren't like us. Books such as this offer some suggestion why.
