Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele

Howard Hughes

The life that inspired the major motion picture The Aviator, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Martin Scorsese.

Howard Hughes has always fascinated the public with his mixture of secrecy, dashing lifestyle, and reclusiveness. This is the book that breaks through the image to get at the man. 80 photographs. Originally published under the title Empire: The Life, Legend, and Madness of Howard Hughes.

"Donald Barlett and James Steele of The Philadelphia Inquirer, the finest team of reporters west of The Times of London, herewith present the perfect biography of the weirdest, most fascinating, most god-awful corporate creature you will ever encounter in broad daylight."—Robert Sherrill, Nation

"Now the full story of the life and death of Howard Hughes has been published, told not as cheap gossip but as a dazzlingly reported, hard-nosed account...[A] fat, beautifully researched book."—John Justin Smith, Chicago Sun-Times

"[The authors] have made an impressive use of documents to fashion this longest, most responsible and authoritative biography of Hughes to date."—Peter S. Prescott, Newsweek

"A remarkable job of investigative reporting . . . a ruthlessly probing 688-page blockbuster biography that cracks Hughes's public persona as it disentangles the psychodrama of his private doings—his ties to Nixon and Watergate, his mysterious death, the way the CIA apparently used him to serve its own ends."—Publishers Weekly

"By far the soundest, fairest and fullest book we have on the bizarre billionaire who commanded the fortunes of Croesus yet could not command himself. It is the story of a man who had everything—and nothing."—John Barkham Reviews

"Of all the books written about Howard Hughes, [this] is easily the best...the first fully documented, crade-to-grave account of a unique American life."—Ted Morgan, New York Times Book Review