Hughes: The Private Diaries, Memos and Letters- The Definitive Biography of the First American Billionaire - Hardcover

Richard Hack has been an investigative writer for 20 years, covering Hollywood and the media for much of that time. He has written biographies of billionaire businessman Ron Perelman and pop star Michael Jackson, as well as co-written the auto-biography of Howard Hughes alter-ego Robert Maheu. Most recently he wrote the biography of famed mystery writer Agatha Christie, Duchess of Death. His columns have appeared in over 600 newspapers. A noted lecturer and industry expert, he frequently appears on television as a commentator.

''There have been previous biographies of Howard Hughes the most infamous being Clifford Irving's hoax in 1972 but this is likely to be the most thorough, written 25 years after the billionaire's death. Hack had access to Hughes's private papers and declassified FBI and CIA documents; he also interviewed people who worked in many of Hughes's enterprises. The author begins with Hughes's childhood, the only son of a wealthy Houston oilman. The lifelong income from Hughes Tool Co. allowed Hughes to set lofty goals and seek to fulfill them: to become a great golfer (one goal that went by the wayside), to be an aviator (his early triumph as a solo pilot led to the creation of Hughes Aircraft, the Spruce Goose, and TWA), and to make movies. Hughes wooed Hollywood starlets, though he married only twice. He became increasingly reclusive, with his behavior going from eccentric to bizarre.'' --Library Journal

''Was ever a life more incredible than that of Howard Hughes? Record-setting aviator, fabled lover, celebrated film director and producer, genius financier and industrialist, the nation's first billionaire. who at one time or another owned TWA, RKO Studios and most of Las Vegas, Hughes (1905-1976) also suffered from severe psychological afflictions that led him to spend his last years in isolation, naked in blacked-out rooms on several continents, devoting days at a time to screening grade-Z movies, dictating long memos to his staff about the proper procedures to keep his room and person free of germs, mostly through the liberal use of Kleenex as a prophylactic, even as he ingested titanic amounts of codeine, his hair and fingernails growing to grotesque length and his back running with untreated sores. Hughes's story has been told before, of course, but never with the overview, insight and, most important, extraordinarily diligent research applied by Hack in this riveting biography. The author of bios of Ron Perelman and Michael Jackson, Hack has his own second-degree connection with Hughes; he co-wrote the autobiography of Hughes's longtime lieutenant, Robert Maheu. To separate fact from rumor in detailing Hughes's life, Hack read more than 8,000 pages of Hughes's private papers, 2,500 pages of recently declassified FBI and CIA documents, over 100,000 pages of previously sealed legal briefs, corporate papers and inventories, and spoke with hundreds of players, key and minor, in Hughes's drama.What Hack has uncovered is an astonishing tale of rampant ambition, obsession and madness. While his prose doesn't match the poetic heights of, say, a Nick Tosches, he presents his chronicle with bold certitude, not only illumining the amazing events of Hughes's life in a captivating manner but penetrating deep into the billionaire's twisted psyche. Readers will be nailed to these pages as, in the most exciting bio of the year, Hack presents the American dream curdling into the American nightmare, personified in a legend who at last has an accounting worthy of him.'' --Publishers Weekly