Howard Hughes His Life And Madness

The life that inspired the major motion picture The Aviator, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Martin Scorsese. Howard Hughes has always fascinated the public with his mixture of secrecy, dashing lifestyle, and reclusiveness. This is the book that breaks through the image to get at the man. Originally published under the title Empire: The Life, Legend, and Madness of Howard Hughes.

Adapted to a major motion picture by director Martin Scorsese, The Aviator stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes! His wealth was legendary. His passions were bizarre. Charles Higham's biography tells the truth about the money, the madness, and the man behind the enigma. Howard Hughes is one of the best known and least understood men of our times--famed for his wealth, his daring, and his descent into madness. Bestselling biographer Higham goes beyond the enigma to reveal the incredible private life of Howard Hughes: * his romances with the great stars of Hollywood--Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Cary Grant, Tyrone Power, and numerous others * his forays into sadomasochism * his involvement with Richard Nixon and Watergate * his bizarre final years This is a compelling portrait of a unique American figure--in a story as revealing as it is unforgettable.

Portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in the Martin Scorsese movie The Aviator, Howard Hughes is legendary as a playboy and pilot—but he is notorious for what he became: the ultimate mystery man. Citizen Hughes is the New York Times bestselling exposé of Hughes’s hidden life, and a stunning revelation of his “megalomaniac empire in the emperor’s own words” (Newsweek). At the height of his wealth, power, and invisibility, the world’s richest and most secretive man kept what amounted to a diary. The billionaire commanded his empire by correspondence, scrawling thousands of handwritten memos to unseen henchmen. It was the only time Howard Hughes risked writing down his orders, plans, thoughts, fears, and desires. Hughes claimed the papers were so sensitive—“the very most confidential, almost sacred information as to my innermost activities”—that not even his most trusted aides or executives were allowed to keep the messages he sent them. But in the early-morning hours of June 5, 1974, unknown burglars staged a daring break-in at Hughes’s supposedly impregnable headquarters and escaped with all the confidential files. Despite a top-secret FBI investigation and a million-dollar CIA buyback bid, none of the stolen secret papers were ever found—until investigative reporter Michael Drosnin cracked the case. In Citizen Hughes, Drosnin reveals the true story of the great Hughes heist—and of the real Howard Hughes. Based on nearly ten thousand never-before-published documents, more than three thousand in Hughes’s own handwriting, Citizen Hughes is far more than a biography, or even an unwilling autobiography. It is a startling record of the secret history of our times.

Nobody was closer to the source of Howard Hughes's vast influence than Robert Maheu, and nobody witnessed his catastrophic descent more closely. Maheu made all Hughes's business deals and represented him and his holdings to the outside world for 13 years. Now he tells the shocking true story behind the life and death of this powerful man. Photographs.

Set amid descriptions of the unimaginable changes that affected America between Hughes's birth in 1905 and his death in 1976, this book gives an insider's perspective about what money can buy, and what it can't.

...well documented and researched...Boxes is definitely a fascinating read and a must read for anyone who is at all curious about Howard Hughes’ life. brThis second edition of Boxes: The Secret Life of Howard Hughes continues the history-changing story of Eva McLelland and her reclusive life married to a mystery man she discovered was Howard Hughes.br Eva McLelland kept her secret for thirty-one stressful years as she lived a nomadic existence with a man who refused to unpack his belongings for fear he would be discovered and have to flee. Only her husband’s death finally released her to tell the story that had been burning inside her for decades.