The secret history of America's real estate barons and the empires they created Written by Vanity Fair investigative reporter and bestselling author, Vicky Ward, this enthralling expose delivers the inside scoop on some of history's most famous (and infamous) real estate dynasties. It is the story of men with outsized dreams and egos to match who were willing to go to any lengths to amass vast fortunes through land speculation. With novelistic flare, Ward describes how those men's ambitions made them the Kings of America, larger-than-life representatives of the American Dream, but how their fortunes rarely bought them the one thing they craved more than gold-acceptance among America's social elite, the often penniless WASP descendants of the founding families. An captivating history of the greatest American real estate barons and their scions, including everyone from the Astors and Rockefellers to the Trumps and Zeckendorffs Includes fascinating, little-known details about how the dynasties began, how they amassed their great wealth, and how, from one generation to the next, those fortunes were either expanded or squandered Author, Vicky Ward, is well connected with the British Media, and her New York Times bestseller, The Devil's Casino was a hit with audiences in the UK Breaks the story on scandals which will be strategically leaked in anticipation of the book, to generate buzz for the topic and for the book

Vicky Ward (New York, NY) has been a contributing editor to Vanity Fair since 2001, specializing in investigative reporting. She has profiled, among others, Jean-Marie Messier, Carly Fiorina, CIA agent Valerie Plame, businesswoman Louise MacBain, Morgan Stanley, the late Bruce Wasserstein, counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke, François Pinault, the Getty, the Guggenheim, the Fairfield Greenwich Group (the Madoff feeder fund), Brooke Astor, and Kate Moss. Ward is a weekly columnist for the Huffington Post, and a contributor to CNBC. She was previously the executive editor of Talk magazine. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Financial Times, the London Times, and the Daily Telegraph. A native Briton, in 1994, Ward was the runner-up for the Catherine Pakenham Award, Britain's most prestigious award for young women writers. She holds a master's in English literature from Cambridge University and has lived in New York City since 1997.