Madness Under the Royal Palms
Encyclopedia
Madness Under The Royal Palms - Love and Death in Palm Beach is a book by author Laurence Leamer
, published by Hyperion, and released on January 20, 2009.
, the social cliques and special interests; and biographies of some of the notable residents who, according to Leamer, represent the Palm Beach experience.
Palm Beach is an island to the East of West Palm Beach, connected to the mainland by a series of bridges over the Intracoastal Waterway
.
It is also a social island and shares little resemblance with the mainland. It is home to some of the wealthiest families in the world, including Donald Trump
and a high density of billionaires.
spent the winter season in Palm Beach for over a decade, witnessing from his front row seat the inner workings of this exclusive enclave. In Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach, Leamer takes readers inside the parties and the clubs, behind the doors of the toniest addresses and into the scandals and the tragedies of some of the wealthiest families in the country. He captures the clash between old money and new, religion and status, and the love, lust, and fatal hatreds that determine the shape of that fiercely protected society.
Madness Under The Royal Palms has generated a firestorm of controversy including supposed threats against Leamer’s life and confrontations on the streets of Palm Beach recorded by a news camera http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0Sj_ToRqcE
Leamer has put the whole matter in context most notably in a lengthy interview for WGBH
Public Television in Boston
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYJbFnbROLQ
Leamer’s Madness Under the Royal Palms shows that money cannot buy happiness. As Leamer writes, “in Palm Beach, people chased after happiness, but like dogs chasing a mechanical rabbit in a greyhound race, no matter how fast they ran, happiness was just a few inches in front of their noses.”
has for acceptance that may never come, or the aging beauty’s struggle to redefine and keep a place in this society, he also captures a pathos and humanity in many of his subjects. There are characters that range from the doyenne of the modern drawing room who forgoes a marriage with family attending and flies to New Zealand
so that Prince Phillip and Prince Edward
might be present instead; the skinflint billionaire who kidnaps his first children, rewrites his own history, and then plots spectacularly against his fifth wife with a prenuptial that would have her paying him if she leaves; to the small-town daughter of a cop who becomes the gatekeeper for it all, the society columnist for the local newspaper.
scandal put Leamer's book centerstage, as Madoff was a trusted Member of the wealthy Jewish community. According to Leamer, Madoff had made inroads to the Jewish elite of Boston, who unwittingly vouched for him after he gained their trust. Many members of the Palm Beach Jewish Community were wiped out by Madoff's Ponzi scheme
, and this has purportedly generated a lot of resentment for Leamer, who has been publicly speaking on the particular impact the scandal has had on the Palm Beach community.
As a result of the book's popularity, Leamer has been interviewed by numerous media associations, and has openly discussed touchy subjects including the social psychology of the Island's Jewish community, anti-Semitism
among the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
s (WASPs), the "old money" disdain for new money, including resident and Mar-a-Lago owner Donald Trump
, and a tiered caste
-type system among the wealthy as reflected in the exclusive clubs.
Leamer discusses the social scene and the backgrounds of the Island's high society clubs including the Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach Country Club and the Bath & Tennis Club. In his book, he claims that the elite organizations have very exclusive and discriminating acceptance policies. As a response to Leamer's portrayal of the Palm Beach Country Club, a place where Leamer says he had often been invited as a dinner guest, Leamer claims he was blacklisted from ever entering the Club. Leamer has not specifically criticized the Palm Beach Jewish Community, but many members have expressed outrage over his comments and have interpreted his words as an ethnic attack. The author has responded by stating that he is also a Palm Beach resident, with many close Jewish friends and associates; his description of the social structure, he claims, are anthropological and social observations that are common knowledge among the local community. Leamer pays many accolades to the philanthropic contributions of the Palm Beach Jewish Community both in his book and in the subsequent interviews. In his WGBH interview, Leamer stated that Bernard Madoff's impact on charities is a testimony to the charitable benefactors in the Jewish community. Had many of the Madoff investors not been Jewish, according to Leamer, the charities would not have felt such an impact. In the interview, Leamer spoke very highly of the intellectual Jewish Community of Boston, who represented a large number of the Jewish elite in Palm Beach.
Laurence Leamer
Laurence Leamer is a best-selling author and journalist. Leamer is a former Ford Fellow in International Development at the University of Oregon and a former International Fellow at Columbia University. He is regarded as an expert on the Kennedy family and has appeared in numerous media outlets...
, published by Hyperion, and released on January 20, 2009.
Overview
The book is a historical and anthropological study of Palm Beach, FloridaPalm Beach, Florida
The Town of Palm Beach is an incorporated town in Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. The Intracoastal Waterway separates it from the neighboring cities of West Palm Beach and Lake Worth...
, the social cliques and special interests; and biographies of some of the notable residents who, according to Leamer, represent the Palm Beach experience.
Palm Beach is an island to the East of West Palm Beach, connected to the mainland by a series of bridges over the Intracoastal Waterway
Intracoastal Waterway
The Intracoastal Waterway is a 3,000-mile waterway along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States. Some lengths consist of natural inlets, salt-water rivers, bays, and sounds; others are artificial canals...
.
It is also a social island and shares little resemblance with the mainland. It is home to some of the wealthiest families in the world, including Donald Trump
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump, Sr. is an American business magnate, television personality and author. He is the chairman and president of The Trump Organization and the founder of Trump Entertainment Resorts. Trump's extravagant lifestyle, outspoken manner and role on the NBC reality show The Apprentice have...
and a high density of billionaires.
Description
Bestselling author Laurence LeamerLaurence Leamer
Laurence Leamer is a best-selling author and journalist. Leamer is a former Ford Fellow in International Development at the University of Oregon and a former International Fellow at Columbia University. He is regarded as an expert on the Kennedy family and has appeared in numerous media outlets...
spent the winter season in Palm Beach for over a decade, witnessing from his front row seat the inner workings of this exclusive enclave. In Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach, Leamer takes readers inside the parties and the clubs, behind the doors of the toniest addresses and into the scandals and the tragedies of some of the wealthiest families in the country. He captures the clash between old money and new, religion and status, and the love, lust, and fatal hatreds that determine the shape of that fiercely protected society.
Madness Under The Royal Palms has generated a firestorm of controversy including supposed threats against Leamer’s life and confrontations on the streets of Palm Beach recorded by a news camera http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0Sj_ToRqcE
Leamer has put the whole matter in context most notably in a lengthy interview for WGBH
WGBH-TV
WGBH-TV, channel 2, is a non-commercial educational public television station located in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. WGBH-TV is a member station of the Public Broadcasting Service , and produces more than two-thirds of PBS's national prime time television programming...
Public Television in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYJbFnbROLQ
Palm Beach Under a Microscope
In Madness Under the Royal Palms, Leamer, best known for his bestsellers including The Kennedy Women, looks at the way wealth makes its own rules and how it creates a culture of privilege untouched by the rules governing most Americans. He was given unprecedented access to the tightly controlled hierarchy in Palm Beach’s coveted inner sanctums. He reveals the lives of the men and women who have come to this exclusive island off the coast of Florida with big ambitions and even larger checkbooks. He covers the hotly contested memberships in the “right” clubs to the rise of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago which leveled long-standing barriers with its glitz and celebration of new glamour. He hilariously writes about the architecture wars -— when the high social value of buying one of the “grand old” homes shifted to knocking those old houses down and the race to build mega-mansions in their place. And he captures the uneasy alliances that fuel marriages -– including the successive trophy wives – to the rancorous and even fatal divorces.Leamer’s Madness Under the Royal Palms shows that money cannot buy happiness. As Leamer writes, “in Palm Beach, people chased after happiness, but like dogs chasing a mechanical rabbit in a greyhound race, no matter how fast they ran, happiness was just a few inches in front of their noses.”
Lessons From The Book
In the end, Leamer’s tale reveals a darker strain. As he discovers the desperate hunger a billionaireBillionaire
A billionaire, in countries that use the short scale number naming system, is a person who has a net worth of at least one billion units of a given currency, usually the United States dollar, Euro, or Pound sterling. Forbes magazine updates a complete list of U.S. dollar billionaires around the...
has for acceptance that may never come, or the aging beauty’s struggle to redefine and keep a place in this society, he also captures a pathos and humanity in many of his subjects. There are characters that range from the doyenne of the modern drawing room who forgoes a marriage with family attending and flies to New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
so that Prince Phillip and Prince Edward
Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex
Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex KG GCVO is the third son and fourth child of Elizabeth II and The Duke of Edinburgh...
might be present instead; the skinflint billionaire who kidnaps his first children, rewrites his own history, and then plots spectacularly against his fifth wife with a prenuptial that would have her paying him if she leaves; to the small-town daughter of a cop who becomes the gatekeeper for it all, the society columnist for the local newspaper.
Controversy following Madoff scandal
The Bernard MadoffBernard Madoff
Bernard Lawrence "Bernie" Madoff is a former American businessman, stockbroker, investment advisor, and financier. He is the former non-executive chairman of the NASDAQ stock market, and the admitted operator of a Ponzi scheme that is considered to be the largest financial fraud in U.S...
scandal put Leamer's book centerstage, as Madoff was a trusted Member of the wealthy Jewish community. According to Leamer, Madoff had made inroads to the Jewish elite of Boston, who unwittingly vouched for him after he gained their trust. Many members of the Palm Beach Jewish Community were wiped out by Madoff's Ponzi scheme
Ponzi scheme
A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation...
, and this has purportedly generated a lot of resentment for Leamer, who has been publicly speaking on the particular impact the scandal has had on the Palm Beach community.
Other Controversies
The author created a row in Palm Beach when he accused the Society Editor of the Palm Beach Daily News, Shannon Donnelly, of receiving a gift (or gifts)http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2009/02/palm_beach_author_laurence_leamer_shiny_sheet.php from a wealthy socialite in exchange for coverage that would elevate the resident's social status. The newspaper has defended Donnelly, and the issue is currently under investigation by reporters. Publisher Joyce Reingold has criticized Madness Under The Royal Palms of inaccuracies, although specific examples were not made.As a result of the book's popularity, Leamer has been interviewed by numerous media associations, and has openly discussed touchy subjects including the social psychology of the Island's Jewish community, anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
among the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant or WASP is an informal term, often derogatory or disparaging, for a closed group of high-status Americans mostly of British Protestant ancestry. The group supposedly wields disproportionate financial and social power. When it appears in writing, it is usually used to...
s (WASPs), the "old money" disdain for new money, including resident and Mar-a-Lago owner Donald Trump
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump, Sr. is an American business magnate, television personality and author. He is the chairman and president of The Trump Organization and the founder of Trump Entertainment Resorts. Trump's extravagant lifestyle, outspoken manner and role on the NBC reality show The Apprentice have...
, and a tiered caste
Caste
Caste is an elaborate and complex social system that combines elements of endogamy, occupation, culture, social class, tribal affiliation and political power. It should not be confused with race or social class, e.g. members of different castes in one society may belong to the same race, as in India...
-type system among the wealthy as reflected in the exclusive clubs.
Leamer discusses the social scene and the backgrounds of the Island's high society clubs including the Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach Country Club and the Bath & Tennis Club. In his book, he claims that the elite organizations have very exclusive and discriminating acceptance policies. As a response to Leamer's portrayal of the Palm Beach Country Club, a place where Leamer says he had often been invited as a dinner guest, Leamer claims he was blacklisted from ever entering the Club. Leamer has not specifically criticized the Palm Beach Jewish Community, but many members have expressed outrage over his comments and have interpreted his words as an ethnic attack. The author has responded by stating that he is also a Palm Beach resident, with many close Jewish friends and associates; his description of the social structure, he claims, are anthropological and social observations that are common knowledge among the local community. Leamer pays many accolades to the philanthropic contributions of the Palm Beach Jewish Community both in his book and in the subsequent interviews. In his WGBH interview, Leamer stated that Bernard Madoff's impact on charities is a testimony to the charitable benefactors in the Jewish community. Had many of the Madoff investors not been Jewish, according to Leamer, the charities would not have felt such an impact. In the interview, Leamer spoke very highly of the intellectual Jewish Community of Boston, who represented a large number of the Jewish elite in Palm Beach.
External links
- http://www.madnessundertheroyalpalms.com The official website of Madness Under The Royal Palms]
- http://www.leamer.com The blog by New York Times bestselling author, Laurence LeamerLaurence LeamerLaurence Leamer is a best-selling author and journalist. Leamer is a former Ford Fellow in International Development at the University of Oregon and a former International Fellow at Columbia University. He is regarded as an expert on the Kennedy family and has appeared in numerous media outlets...
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0Sj_ToRqcE NBC affiliate WPTV Channel 5 exclusive video on Madness Under The Royal Palms]
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYJbFnbROLQ Laurence LeamerLaurence LeamerLaurence Leamer is a best-selling author and journalist. Leamer is a former Ford Fellow in International Development at the University of Oregon and a former International Fellow at Columbia University. He is regarded as an expert on the Kennedy family and has appeared in numerous media outlets...
interview with WGBHWGBH-TVWGBH-TV, channel 2, is a non-commercial educational public television station located in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. WGBH-TV is a member station of the Public Broadcasting Service , and produces more than two-thirds of PBS's national prime time television programming...
Boston public television over his article in Boston MagazineBoston magazineBoston is a monthly magazine concerning life in the Greater Boston area and has been in publication for more than 40 years.-About the magazine:The magazine is self-described as:... - http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/dispatch_reversal_of_fortune/Boston MagazineBoston magazineBoston is a monthly magazine concerning life in the Greater Boston area and has been in publication for more than 40 years.-About the magazine:The magazine is self-described as:...
article "Reversal of Fortune" by Laurence LeamerLaurence LeamerLaurence Leamer is a best-selling author and journalist. Leamer is a former Ford Fellow in International Development at the University of Oregon and a former International Fellow at Columbia University. He is regarded as an expert on the Kennedy family and has appeared in numerous media outlets...