Word: clan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...started building a palace just off the Grand Canal. The palace's ultimate glory was a set of 18th century frescoes by Tiepolo, which depicted the story of Antony and Cleopatra with almost as much flair as the 20th Century-Fox film. With the extinction of the Labia clan, the palace turned into a squalid dump; illiterate boarders spent unknowing nights under the Tiepolos. In 1948, another Spaniard, the wealthy Don Carlos de Beistegui, now 78, rediscovered the palace, as he said, "with a violence of love and passion that no woman has inspired...
Among the Du Ponts, the business of getting to know one another is a serious affair. While more than 150 other families have married into the clan over the years, the Du Ponts like to marry among themselves, often with first cousins. That is their way of keeping the name-and the money-in the family. It also helps to maintain the unique dynasty that runs one of the world's richest family businesses, E.I. du Pont de Nemours...
...This multiple biography by William Carr, longtime New York Post reporter, conscientiously chronicles all this progress: the Powder Trust, the antitrust suits, the intra-clan squabbles over control of the business, the rise and fall of family leaders. It also flickers upon Du Pont oddballs, heroes and politicians...
Author Carr plainly started with the notion that any clan with a history and a fortune like the Du Ponts deserves a biography. He is not the first to attempt it (three more or less forgettable Du Pont chronicles have been turned out in the last 30 years), but he is the first to get full family cooperation. While Carr produces nothing that is startlingly perceptive or especially exciting, he does deserve credit for pursuing the rocky, incredible history of the dynasty with scrupulous objectivity. The Du Ponts are all there: warts, splendor...
Burned Bridges. In the Wyeth clan, almost everybody paints but the dogs, and Jamie started early. Says he: "I'd come home from a movie and draw the characters in it." He quit school after the sixth grade, and goes to a tutor mornings. "It's really butting in, the schoolwork, I mean," says he. "I'm not going to college, of course. Leaving school is like burning all your bridges. But painting is purely individual; it may be the only profession where you can do this." Such dedicated talk does not mean that the lean youth...