I really enjoyed reading about Doris, it really was fascinating to read her story. It was well written and it was entertaining.

How do the ultra wealthy live? I enjoyed the book to learn how Doris Duke lived. I know she was a very private person and this biography took us through an interesting time in history through the gilded age to modern day.

Honestly, is there anyone who had a life more fabulous and terrible and interesting than Doris Duke? Bingham draws us into the complicated, whirlwind world of the famous heiress, giving new insights on the marriages and money that made her the object of fascination around the globe.

This was a very interesting biography of Doris Duke, full of information and little know facts. I recommend for history lovers

Doris Duke is certainly an iconic figure. Since my visit to her Newport home, ROUGH POINT, I’ve been extremely interested in her life.

Bingham has included both public and private life in this well written memoir. I can’t wait to visit her other residences.

Very interesting social history embedded in this well researched biography.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC.

Interesting read however I did t really enjoy it. Took me way too long to read it
Had a lot of really good facts about her life and her immediate rise to her status; howe we, not as good as I was hoping for

Unfortunately, this is pretty disappointing. It's not necessarily the author's fault in that there isn't a lot of material to draw from to write a bio. Maybe skip this one.

Thanks for the review copy.

Doris Duke was a remarkable woman – and remarkably rich. A tobacco heiress, she had more money than she knew what to do with. And if ever the adage “money can’t buy happiness” is relevant, then it fits the bill here. She was also a woman of many talents, lived a full and varied life, was a great philanthropist, unconventional and not particularly likeable. She was also a very private person, kept no journals, left almost no letters and gave no interviews. Author Sallie Bingham has done a great job in documenting the life and her research has been thorough and meticulous. I very much enjoyed finding out about Doris Duke, but ultimately I found the biography unsatisfying as I got no sense of who exactly Doris Duke was, no sense of her inner world. This isn’t perhaps the author’s fault as she had so little to go on. But too often she allowed herself to speculate and make assumptions, using “perhaps” and “probably” too often and using “she must have” and “she may have” when it is impossible to know. Occasional cod psychology, although no doubt tempting, can’t be verified. I also found that the book rambled somewhat and was unfocused at times. Nevertheless, although Duke remained an enigma for me overall this is a worthwhile and interesting account of Doris Duke’s life.

The book itself is unsatisfying only because there isn't more available about Duke. As an intensely private woman, there is so little left to go through.

The author had a difficult task ahead of her with this title but did an admirable job of it, even with such limited information.

My thanks to Sallie Bingham, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Netgalley for the eARC.

When I read that Sallie Bingham had access to 800 linear feet of Doris Duke's papers, I had high hopes that the acclaimed author would be able to present us with a fresh, three-dimensional portrait of this reclusive heiress. Having sifted through archives myself, I understand that there is no real way of knowing what gems are in the holdings until you're there, sifting through them. So I can appreciate what lay before Bingham once she was able to go through Duke's papers. As much as I wanted to love this book, and get to know Doris Duke better, I am afraid that she is just as mysterious to me as she was when the publisher and Netgalley kindly granted me a review copy in exchange for this honest review. While the book did not live up to the promise of offering us a new, bold look at Duke, it was very well-written, as fans of Bingham might expect.

Such a mysterious person, this Doris Duke. It’s almost like she didn’t want anything much of herself left behind for posterity, as she was going to live as she pleased. And she certainly had the money and will to do so. The author was granted free rein to go through Duke’s papers for this book, but she just didn’t write letters much, and shunned publicity, as she was hyper-private. Doris was a very tall, athletic woman, at least six foot in her prime, and she enjoyed physical activities like swimming in the ocean and tennis. I’ve read a previous book about her years ago, but I don’t recall much from it. Much seems to be made of her being expunged from the Social Register, but it seems to have meant nothing to Doris herself, who probably made light of the fact.

I enjoyed reading about her life, her marriages, her parents and brother, along with the power company and university and offshoots that the family left as their legacy. I’ve always enjoyed reading about philanthropists and imagined being able to do that and how it must feel so wonderful to help others and leave behind something that will live on and do good things for people long after you are gone. It’s just too bad Doris Duke didn’t leave more of herself behind for us to get to know her better. It doesn’t really feel like there’s much of her in the book, despite all of the paperwork that was used to research her, she still seems quite ephemeral and out of reach.  Advanced electronic review copy was provided by NetGalley, author Sallie Bingham, and the publisher. 3.5 of 5 Stars.

Doris Duke was a very private woman - she never gave interviews, did not keep diaries and seldom wrote letters. The author, who had access to Duke's archive, had a trove of letters from other people written to Duke but none that Duke wrote herself. This isn't the author's fault but it makes for a disappointing book. Indeed, the most interesting chapters are about Duke's parents, her husbands James Cromwell and Porfirio Rubirosa. Duke herself almost comes across as a secondary character. Most fascinating are the houses that Duke lived in (especially Shangri-La, the Islamic-influenced villa she built in Hawaii) and the art she collected. Duke's philanthropy is interesting to a point but details about her dealings with her charitable foundation bring the book to a glacial crawl. Often significant details about particular events in her life are ignored - for example, her marriage to Cromwell is detailed up to a certain point but no details are given regarding their divorce. Later, Paul Ruebens' (Pee-wee Herman) marriage to Duke's adopted daughter Chandi Heffner provides some juicy gossip but then there is no mention of whatever became of that marriage. A well-written book but will leave the reader wanting more.

Doris Duke was a fascinating woman, and one I always enjoy learning more about. This book revealed a little more, but sadly, there's still just little known about this woman. She learned early on that the press was not always her friend. I hoped for more from this book, but ultimately found it disappointing and was thrown from time to time by the choppy presentation hopping from topic to topic without smooth transition.

Very little has been written about Doris Duke, the heiress. And, in a nutshell, that is the problem. This book tries to make a picture from what little there is, but it is ultimatley, unsucessful and unfulfilling.