GoodReads meta-data is 336 pages, rated 2.73 by 11 litizens.
Genre: Biography.
Verdict: Not found.
Declaration: I read only the Kindle sample.
We have been to Doris Duke’s (1912–1993) home — Shangri-la — three times, and found it interesting, impressive, intriguing, innovative, and more. The accounts of the guides and the handouts tell visitors a little about the reclusive DD, but not very much.
When I went looking for more information after our last visit I came across a reference to this forthcoming title, so I signed on for the Kindle sample when it was published. In due course it popped up on the screen.
Well, the sample includes the first two chapters which I read to the end. I am none the wiser about DD. The chapters I read have neither rhyme nor reason but dart back and forth with the breathlessness of a confused thriller writer. There is no orderly or organised examination of her origins, nature, nurture, growth, and….
Even that soft touch, GoodReads, has some stingers about the ‘shambles’ the book is and the endless ‘fluff’ and ‘distractions’ that pad it out. Two chapters was more than enough for me to press Delete.
This title was published by a very major New York City publisher from which fact draw your own conclusions, Reader. Bingham has published many short stories and other fiction.
Here’s what I already knew: Mr Duke make money from cigarettes, so much that he founded the eponymous university, Doris was the only child and a fabulously rich heiress who built on Oahu a spectacular all-modern-conveniences house, which has an Arabic water garden and pavilion. She filled the house with with Islamic decorative art. During its construction in the 1930s the film Lost Horizons (based on James Hilton’s novel) was current and the builders nicknamed the building Shangri-la; she liked that. Tall, elegant, and rich, this is one of the places where she went for solitude, hiding from the predators.
In addition to the buildings and the art work, there are also videos of its construction and some of her activities there. She was a very serious collector and the property also houses an archive documenting and authenticating the collection. She willed it all to the state of Hawaii to preserve and make public with an endowment of one billion dollars.
There are entries on Wikipedia that offer a more general account of the Dukes.