Howard Hughes: The Untold Story (4)

Howard Hughes: The Untold Story
By: Peter Harry Brown and Pat H. Broeske
Read 2/8/09

An interesting look at Howard Hughes from the begining of his life all the way to the end. He stated his life with an over-protective mother how instilled in him a fear of germs that stayed through his whole life. Known as the worlds richest man, and aviator, movie producer, womanizer and eccentric recluse. All are true, but there is more to each of the stories. He was a brilliant engineer and was involved in the process of both is fathers company as well as his own aerospace company. He often said he would be happy just to do that. But he did much more, his wealth meant little to him except to provide a means to do whatever he wanted. Which often meant perusing woman, then offering to help them with movie careers which may or may not happen. Many men collect things, Hughes collected women, he had scores of them kept in apartments, with handlers, and trainers, the cost must have been staggering.
Thought it all he had what we now recognize as treatable OCD, but at the time it was unknown and he often wondered if he was going insane. This combined with many plane and auto accidents plus lingering effects of syphilis turned him into a paranoid person who may have been his own worst enemy. However in his final 10 years of life he was virtually a prisoner kept by his core group of people who kept him well medicated on codeine and Valium while they took control of his billion dollar empire.
An excellent book, well written and interesting. It looks mostly at his personal life with the business in the background. It is an amazing story and any one chapter might be an amazing life, but when you put all the parts of his life together it was incredible, and above all very sad.