I had never heard this story which only surprises me because I have lived in Florida my whole life. Also, this was an amazingly brutal story. It made me so sad I just can't believe people are as horrible as in this book. I don't normally read about like true crime, but I was interested in this book for two reasons the hotel and the fact that this was similar to Gilded Age type wealth.

The book was well written but it is long. It also spans something like 70 years. Basically from around the 50s to now. I enjoyed the history part very much and of course now I must do additional research to see pictures and all that :)

I really do recommend this book for anyone into the true crime stuff. It is a little history that super relate to the crime, but that is the kind of stuff I am more into. It was a long book, something like 60 chapters, but still a quick read.

This book was excellent! I hardly put it down since I started reading it. It is an amazing story about how dilapidated the White House was after WWII. It shows just how real the troubles were and how stressful the wars were.

Truman had a hard decision to rebuild the entire house, but he pushed through it and now our president still lives at the same address. If he hadn't we would have lost this house forever. It is true that there is not a lot of original items in the house, but now, it doesn't seem to take away from the home. People in the 50s may have been bothered by it, but today most people don't even know it was rebuilt.

The only downfall of this book is the lack of pictures. Since I was reading it on Kindle, I am not holding that against it as the hard copy might have more pictures. Great quick read!

I should not have read this book first, but I did and it really didn't have a huge impact on the quality of this book.  This is about what happened after their death.  I didn't realize exactly how this story ended so it was a nice surprise for me and I got to a point in the last several chapters where I found it hard to put down.  It was one of those where you didn't want the story to end the way it did, but there is still room in this family's story for more.

It was a quick read and that was nice and the names were not horrible to pronounce - or at least think that I was pronouncing them in my head correctly :)  It is very interesting how things are clouded by so much red tape or politics or whatever you would call those random roadblocks.  They have to leave things unfinished rather than make something happen.  Sad.

I wonder what will happen with this story or if this really was the final chapter...

This was a great book.  There are so many people from the gilded age, or families I should say, that acquired an enormous amounts of money who you have never heard of. Huguette Clark is who this book is about and her whirlwind life. She had, she has passed, a house that she purchased for protection, isolation if you will, and never actually moved in. If I remember correctly it was furnished but at the very least she had done a lot of work there. What drew me to this was that she lived most of her life in 740 Park which was another book I had read.

It was a great book, the history was very detailed and I found it all super interesting. It ended up, like a lot of people in her situation, lots of money and alone, that she was a recluse. She had several properties, there is one in California called Bellosguardo where the inside had not been updated since the 1950s. I can't remember when the last time she had visited the site, but it was basically always ready for living. It also sheds light on the years of fighting that goes along with these huge family fortunes. How what people want done with their things when they pass away really doesn't matter. It was a sad ending because you wonder when she was knowing what was happening and when she lost that - or if she ever lost that. She was just short of 105 when she passed I believe.

I enjoy reading books like this, but I found that this particular one was a bit lacking in background information.  It seemed to be a little scattered for me.  I like when the building things are explained in more detail, more history around it.  It was a good read, just not the best I have read.

I got through it pretty quickly so that was good.  It had only a couple of pictures in it, not that I expect them when reading on a Kindle, but I had gotten the impression that there were several - not sure why I thought that, something I saw I think.

It was really more of a story of personalities and the difficulties of turning a building into a co-op.  What all goes along with that, a board, deciding what to do with funds, how crazy all that is.

I really enjoyed this book, but oh my goodness it took me almost a whole year to get it read! It not that it wasn't interesting, but it was so detailed and I had a hard time with most of the names of places and people.

So many thing, books, documentaries, what ever are on WWII but not so much on WWI. I would say that if you are at all interested in the subject you should certainly read this book!!!

The numbers around these battles is unbelievable. It really shows how destructive war is. I can't imagine war on our soil, war like this. It is very insane to think what the civilians had to deal with. Destroying whole villages, starving, just all around bad.

Can't forget the bad things that happened because we certainly don't want a repeat of this type of behavior.

This book was really great!!!  We already know that the Unites States doesn't really have historical buildings, it just isn't something that our society seems to value.  The buildings that were built in the early 20th century were very much the definition of awesome!  It is so heartbreaking to know that we could not save some of these amazing buildings, but Grand Central, she was saved!!  It has so many amazing features and of course it has been such an iconic site in so many movies.  You just don't get all the details until you see it in person.  I happened to read this book before I went to New York for the first time and it really made the experience of seeing Grand Central that much more amazing.  From the whisper corners to the celestial ceiling.  The author just gives packs so much history into this book and I found it a very easy quick read.

One of the nice things that I was able to experience, because I knew to look for it from this book, was the spot on the ceiling.  The entire ceiling was cleaned except for a small patch left to remind people of the beauty that was once forgotten and valued enough to be brought back.  The ceiling was of course dirtied from all the steam engines and other pollutions that aren't around anymore.  The fact that people who used the station all the time had no idea that the ceiling was anything other than just a dark patch of building is unbelievable.

We, the United States, imposed so many taxes on building like this that it was cost prohibited to actually save the truly magnificent places.  The book explains how close it was to falling victim to the same fate as her counterpart Penn Station.  The love that so few people have for these buildings that really do provide valuable history for the citizens makes you wish that you could do more to help save them!

I may be  a little bias as I am not only a lover of architecture, but I am a railroader.  I recommend this book even if you aren't either of those two things, if you just like to learn about our history.

This is not normally the type of book that I read, but I figured it would be a good change since it is such a classic story. I found it very entertaining. Anytime I read a book that takes place in other countries is pronouncing people's names or cities but that never makes it a bad story, just a little harder for me to follow. The story was very interesting and different from the movie, which is very normal.

It did seem to drag a bit towards the end, but I really think that was because I had watched the movies and was just waiting for the end to happen. The extra parts were interesting and the story of the monster, basically that was where the new material came from, was very detailed and showed his journey and his learning experiences. Always, when I am watching a move or reading a story that has a major component of mass revenge or total misunderstanding of people's actions it makes me a bit uncomfortable, but it is a real and relatable thing. It happens all the time and all over and as the story shows, for all time periods.

Overall I would recommend this book to everyone, just need to read the whole story and when you understand the history of it the experience is that much more amazing. The history I am talking about is that the whole idea was a vacation activity for a group of people. They had a friendly activity to create a short story and this was Mary Shelley's. Pretty amazing how creative some people really are.

This is a book by a YouTube artist that I am subscribed to Mamrie Hart.  One of the interesting things about Mamrie is that she is the daughter of an actor who played in In the Heat of the Night, which I certainly watched as  a kid.

The book is a very comical telling of the many funny events that have happened in her life so far.  She has also incorporated drink recipes to set the tone for each chapter.  She hosts the YouTube channel You Deserve a Drink where she also makes crazy funny and unique drinks.

I don't normally read books like this, but I wanted to support her because I appreciate the content she publishes on YouTube and I knew it would be a funny tale.  I am not sure which of my friends I would recommend this book to, but I certainly enjoyed it.