Legacy - Christopher Ogden

The father fled East Prussia to escape the 1880s pogroms and, as a penniless immigrant boy, hawked newspapers on the streets of Chicago. The son, who lives on Philadelphia's Main Line and on a palatial California estate, is a multibillionaire and America's most generous living philanthropist. Legacy is an epic saga of how Moses and Walter Annenberg built a vast publishing empire and one of the nation's greatest family fortunes. Seeping through the century, the story encompasses brutal circulation wars, bookie parlours and racetracks, a lethal presidential vendetta, the glory days of Hollywood and of television, diplomatic drawing rooms, White House intrigues, tangled romances, a tragic suicide, extravagant social climbing, the Royal Family, a fabled art collection and astonishing generosity. Unauthorised but written with unprecedented access to the Annenberg family and their private papers, Legacy is at once a moving story of a family's triumph, a rich cultural history and an irresistible reading experience.