Laurence Leamer

"'There are certain women,' Truman Capote wrote, 'who, though perhaps not born rich, are born to be rich.' Barbara 'Babe' Paley, Gloria Guinness, Marella Agnelli, Slim Hayward, Pamela Churchill, C. Z. Guest, Lee Radziwill (Jackie Kennedy's sister) -- they were the toast of midcentury New York, each beautiful and distinguished in her own way. These women captivated and enchanted Capote -- and at times, they infuriated him as well. He befriended them,...

"Alfred Hitchcock was fixated on the blond actresses who starred in many of his iconic movies. The lengths he went to in order to showcase--and often manipulate--these women would become the stuff of movie legend. But the women themselves have rarely been at the center of the story, until now. In Hitchcock's Blondes, Laurence Leamer offers an intimate journey into the lives of eight legendary actresses whose stories helped chart the course of the...

Describes the brutal killing of a young black man and subsequent conviction of two Klansmen in 1981 Alabama and the civil suit that exposed the true motives and philosophy of the organization and ultimately bankrupted them.