The Last Baron by Tom Sancton

The Last Baron by Tom Sancton

A riveting, on-the-edge-of-your-seat tale about the notorious 1978 kidnapping of Baron douard-Jean"Wado" Empain, intertwined with the story of his famous grandfather, the first baron and builder of the Paris Metro. A multigenerational saga told against the backdrops of both Belle poque and 1970s high-fashion Paris.

What does it take to create a dynasty? What does it take to keep one going? And what does it take to save the life of the dazzling but flawed man who inherited it all? Launched in the 1880s by the first baron, the Empain industrial empire spread from Belgium and France to span more than a dozen countries. When Wado took over, he further expanded the company, became a key player in France's nuclear sector, and, by the mid-1970s, was one of the country's most powerful business leaders-a self-described "master of the universe." But these were also the "years of lead," marked by a rash of high-profile kidnappings around the globe, including the headline-grabbing seizure of American heiress Patty Hearst.

Wado's vertiginous rise caught the eye of Alain Cailloll, a small-time gangster who had grown up in a wealthy family before embracing a life of crime. On January 23, 1978, Caillol and his confederates snatched the baron off the Paris streets, sure that they'd get the 80 million francs they demanded in ransom. To show they meant business, they chopped off Wado's little finger and warned that more body parts would follow.

But nothing unfolded as the kidnappers, or Wado himself, expected. Would Empain's company pay? Could his family afford this astronomical sum? How much was the life of a leader, a father, and a husband worth? Most important, could a determined police chief and his crack investigators outsmart the kidnappers? The answers to those questions unspooled over two months in a tangle of events leading to a bloody showdown whose consequences would prove fatal to the Empain dynasty.

Tom Sancton earned a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford after graduating from Harvard in 1971. He has contributed to publications such as Vanity Fair, Fortune, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal. He co-authored the international best seller Murder of a Princess: The Investigation and wrote the novel The Armageddon Project. Sancton, a jazz musician in his own right, has toured widely throughout Europe and recorded over a dozen CDs, as well as starring alongside Woody Allen in the feature film Wild Man Blues. Sancton was given the name Andrew W. Sancton in 2007. He is a Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Tulane University, where he teaches advanced creative writing classes.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9780593183809
ISBN 10	0593183800
Titel	The Last Baron
Autor	Tom Sancton
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Hardback
Verlag	Penguin Putnam Inc
Erscheinungsjahr	2022-04-05
Seitenanzahl	368
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.