Barely a mile from the hedge-fund mansions that now define the Hamptons lies a very different world: the endangered Sagaponack preserve of such literary lions as E. L. Doctorow, Robert Caro, and Jason Epstein. Chronicling the rise of “the Sagg Main Set” in the 1960s and 1970s, when Truman Capote, James Jones, George Plimpton, and Kurt Vonnegut came out to play, and Bobby Van’s was the place to drown a bad review, Michael Shnayerson focuses on two of the fraternity’s surviving grandees—James Salter and Peter Matthiessen—whose decades-long friendship remains as remarkable as their books.
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The “David Herbert collection” was said to be one of the great troves of unknown Abstract Expressionist masterpieces—Pollocks, de Koonings, Rothkos, etc. But is it? The reputations of New York’s once venerable Knoedler gallery and of art-world doyenne Ann Freedman hang on the answer
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Tucked away in Beverly Hills, the secluded neighborhood of Benedict Canyon is home to the sprawling estates of Jay Leno, Bruce Springsteen, and David Beckham, as well as moguls David Geffen and Ron Burkle. But when a mysterious Saudi prince announced plans to build a big spread of his own—85,000-square-feet big, complete with servants’ quarters and a private “sons’ villa”—the claws came out. Led by Martha Karsh, the hard-charging wife of a billionaire investor, the neighbors have hired a team of lawyers and launched a publicity blitzkrieg to stop construction. Michael Shnayerson documents the real-estate war galvanizing this once quiet Los Angeles enclave.
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John White’s family has been working its 57-acre oceanfront farm in Sagaponack since 1695, the last holdouts against a tide of Wall Streeter mansions. But in an effort to save his children's inheritance—by selling 10 of those acres to a Houston oil mogul—White may have lost it all
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