Hamptons Overdrive, by Michael Shnayerson (August 2008)
While much of America worries about foreclosure, John Paulson, who made $3.7 billion shorting subprime mortgages, has plunked down $41.3 million for a Southampton estate. Another just went (to Tiger Woods?) for $60 million. And Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman is building a vast compound in Water Mill. But, amid whispers about which Wall Street casualties will lose their summer spreads, the market for properties below $10 million is grim.
Another Hamptons Whodunit, by Michael Shnayerson (November 2003)
Swelled by rain, East Hampton’s Georgica Pond would swamp many waterfront mansions, flooding cellars and lawns. Then, one July night, someone destroyed the barrier between it and the ocean, draining a 290-acre pond. Hamptonites guessed who among them—Martha Stewart? Steven Spielberg?—had means, motive, and opportunity.
Intelligence Report: Hamptons Society Wedding, by Richard Rushfield and Adam Leff (June 2002)
Dissecting the cast of a Hamptons event.
Murder in East Hampton, by Michael Shnayerson (January 2002)
Long Island’s East End was shocked by the murder of one of its wealthiest residents: 52-year-old Ted Ammon, who’d built much of his $80 million fortune as one of the top LBO players at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts in the 1980s, was discovered naked and bludgeoned in the master bedroom of his house on Middle Lane. Ammon was popular with business colleagues, police found, but his private life, once seemingly idyllic, held several ominous signs, not least the vicious divorce battle with his second wife, Generosa.
The Counterfeit Rockefeller, by Bryan Burrough (January 2001)
Often posing as the scion of a famous family, Christopher Rocancourt—alias Rockefeller (or De Laurentiis or de la Renta)—swindled millions from marks around the world: there was the diamond-smuggling scheme in Zaire, the alleged perfume fraud involving Jermaine Jackson, the fleecing of a Beverly Hills boutique owner. Yet somehow he kept slipping through the arms of the law. Bryan Burrough tracked a master of audacity to the Hamptons, where he ran afoul of a genuine heir.
Hip-Hop Debs, by Nancy Jo Sales (September 2000)
Hotel pioneer Conrad Hilton strutted a parade of showgirls on his arm, and Zsa Zsa Gabor as his second wife. His son, Nicky, notoriously wed and divorced Liz Taylor. Now a fourth Hilton generation—Paris, with her younger sister, Nicky, in her wake—is setting society on its ear. Planning a cosmetics line, starring in a documentary about herself, and denying tabloid tales of a romance with Leonardo DiCaprio, Paris is the very model of a hip-hop debutante.
Studios by the Sea, by Bob Colacello (August 2000)
Cindy Sherman bought a $1.4 million home in Sag Harbor, Ross Bleckner has settled into Truman Capote’s Sagaponack saltbox, and Julian Schnabel owns a 10-bedroom Stanford White place in Montauk. The Hamptons has an enduring hold on American painters, from the 1878 invasion of the Tile Club through the Abstract Expressionist reign of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, and into the wave of artists, dealers, and patrons gathered for the high season.
The Road to West Egg, by Christopher Hitchens (May 2000)
First published 75 years ago, The Great Gatsby still has a grip on modern sensibilities even as it stands as the ultimate novel of the Jazz Age. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unflinching farewell to the American Dream lie the shadows of evil yet to come—and a bridge to innocence past.
Sand Simeon, by Michael Shnayerson (August 1998)
Rising on one of the last big fields in the Hamptons is a 100,000-square-foot limestone villa complex that may be the largest new home in America. Just who is the man building it—Ira Rennert—and why does he want a compound that’s more than twice the size of Bill Gates’s?
True Lies II, by Bruce Feirstein (July 1995)
A weekend’s worth of Hamptons insincerity.
