William Stadiem – författare

In this historically momentous memoir, the segregationist senator’s mixed-race daughter speaks out about her life in the shadows. Breaking nearly eight decades of silence, Essie Mae Washington–Williams comes forward with the dramatic story of her life. Her father, the late Strom Thurmond, had been the nation’s leading proponent of racial segregation. He famously undertook a twenty-four–hour filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1957, a desperate attempt to save the South from “mongrelization”. Her mother, however, was a black teenager named Carrie Butler who worked as a maid on the Thurmond family’s South Carolina plantation. Set against the explosive civil rights era, this poignant memoir recalls how Essie Mae struggled with the discrepancy between the generous and even affectionate father she knew privately, and the Old Southern politician, railing against greater racial equality, who refused to acknowledge her publicly. From her richly told narrative, as well as the letters she and Thurmond wrote to each other over the years, emerges a fascinating portrait of a father who counseled and supported his daughter, yet would not break with the values of his Dixiecrat constituents.

Frank Sinatra’s former valet & aide dishes on the fifteen years he spent working for Ol'' Blue Eyes in this memoir that’s “sordid, trashy, funny, and so rat-a-tat with its smart inside info” (Liz Smith).

“With its improbably witty prose, this exercise in deep dish never makes you feel like taking a shower. It’s the one Sinatra tome that doesn’t stint on rageaholism or sexual addiction or the affection this kind of split personality still engenders. A.” —Entertainment Weekly

As the right hand of Frank Sinatra from 1953 to 1968, George Jacobs had one of the coolest jobs in the world at the time when Sinatra was the undisputed master of the entertainment universe. Jacobs rose from his humble beginnings in New Orleans to join Sinatra in the mansions of Beverly Hills, the penthouses of Manhattan, the palaces of Europe, the pinnacles of world power. George Jacobs saw it all, did it all.

Sinatra took Jacobs with him on the ride of the century, from blacklist Hollywood to gangland Chicago to an emerging Las Vegas to Camelot, not to mention dolce vita Rome and swinging London. As a member of Sinatra’s inner circle, Jacobs drank with Ava Gardner, danced with Marilyn Monroe, massaged John F. Kennedy, golfed with Sam Giancana, and played jazz with the Prince of Monaco while his boss secretly pursued Princess Grace. He also partied with Mia Farrow, but that one cost him his job of a lifetime.

Through the ring-a-ding-ding and the stars, royals, politicians, moguls, and mobsters emerged a warm and intimate relationship that reveals a complex Sinatra: vulnerable and arrogant, charismatic and violent, loving and disdainful, confident and painfully self-conscious.

“A juicy tell-all book that entertains mightily. . . . The book runs with the kind of spicy details that make for the most captivating cocktail hour chatter. . . . While much has been written about Sinatra’s life and times, Jacobs add more with his intimate persona spin on the legendary man.” —Denver Rocky Mountain News

“A complex portrait of two complex men at a crossroads in history . . . full of the expected tantalizing tidbits about Sinatra, his women, the mob, Joe and Jack Kennedy, Dino and Sammy. . . . The requisite sex and drink and dusk-to-dawn partiers are in there.” —Los Angeles Times

Madame Claude, by renowned social historian William Stadiem, is a magnificent audiobook about the brilliant, complicated, and utterly amoral woman behind the most glamorous and successful escort service in the world.In post-WWII Paris, Madame Claude ran the most exclusive finishing school in the world. Her alumnae married more fortunes, titles and famous names than any of the Seven Sisters. The names on her client list were epic—Kennedy, Rothschild, Agnelli, Onassis, Niarchos, Brando, Sinatra, McQueen, Picasso, Chagall, Qaddafi, the Shah, and that''s just for starters. By the 1950s, she was the richest and most celebrated self-made woman in Europe, as much of a legend as Coco Chanel. Born Fernande Grudet, a poor Jewish girl in the aristocratic chateau city of Angers, the future Madame led a life of high adventure—resistance fighter, concentration camp survivor, gun moll of the Corsican Mafia and erstwhile streetwalker—before becoming the ultimate broker between beauty and power. She harnessed the emerging postwar technology of the telephone to create the concept of the call girl. But Madame Claude wasn''t just selling sex—she was the world''s ultimate matchmaker, the Dolly Levi of the Power Elite.She was also one of the most controversial—and most wanted—women in the world. Now, through his own conversations with the woman herself and interviews with the great men and remarkable women on whom she built her empire, social historian and biographer William Stadiem pierces the veil of Claude’s secret, forbidden universe of pleasure and privilege.