The Man In The Rockefeller Suit: The Amazing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Impostor by Mark Seal

The Man In The Rockefeller Suit: The Amazing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Impostor by Mark Seal
336 pages
Published June 2011 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher

In 1978 a seventeen-year-old young man arrived in the United States from Germany, imposing on the kindness of a family he only just barely met. Though Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter arrived in Connecticut under his real name, already very little else about his life was real.

"Christian was too big for Bergen, all of the men seemed to be saying, and creating another persona was the only way he would ever leave the little town that nobody ever leaves."

Over the next several decades, Gerhartsreiter refined his act and charmed his way into society circles even as his arrogance grew.  While in Connecticut, he was such a rude house guest that he was kicked out of three homes. By the time he arrived in California (yet again imposing on people he had only briefly met in Germany), "he had clearly learned how to flatter and acquiesce, when to speak and when to remain silent, and how to work the American system." By then Gerhartsreiter had become Christopher Chichester, relative to Lord Mountbatten.

Leaving California, Chichester headed back to the East Coast, emerging on Wall Street as Christopher Crowe, executive while continuing to maintain that he has aristocratic ties. After repeatedly being exposed as a fraud in his jobs, and when law enforcement began asking questions about California, Crowe disappeared. Years passed before he again reemerged, this time as Clark Rockefeller, his greatest character yet.

"To his friends and acquaintances, Clark Rockefeller was a prince. He was so friendly, so attentive, so eager to please. He cared about people and seemed genuinely interested in them"

In the summer of 2008, Clark's perfect world came to an abrupt end. After a divorce, and the loss of his gravy train, Clark determined to get his revenge by kidnapping the couple's daughter bringing the FBI down on him. Gradually the world began to learn the truth about Clark Rockefeller. All of this is public records.

By the time Rockefeller was brought to trial, Mark Sea had been investigating him for almost a year but as the trial progressed, Seal discovered that he, too had been conned by Rockefeller. Wanting to finally learn the full story, Seal traveled to Germany then back and forth across the U.S. talking to everyone he could find who might be able to offer a glimpse into the man who would become Clark Rockefeller. The result was first an article in Vanity Fair magazine and then this book.

Seal may not have offered any new glimpses in the mind of a con artist (he doesn't cover the psychological aspect at all) and after nearly 400 pages there is no reason "why." I didn't need one; I've long ago learned that there is not always an easy answer.

What I did learn is that rich people are amazingly gullible and that if you act like you're better than some people, it will make them all the more anxious to be in your circle. Almost all of the people that Seal interviewed recounted some type of unusual behavior on Rockefeller's part. Apparently, if you're rich enough (or people think you are), people will write off these kinds of things as eccentricities.

Just for you, Mari, I took off my rose-colored glasses while I read this one; I'm perfectly willing to accept that there are people like Rockefeller out there in the world. It turns out that reading about one of them makes for highly entertaining reading. One reviewer called the book "cinematic;" NPR recently suggested that readers pick up this book before it's made into a movie. Sam Rockwell, I think this one has your name on it.

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
Published October 2010 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

Usually I start a book review with a synopsis, but it hardly seems necessary in the case of this book.  It's a biography so it almost goes without saying that the book begins at approximately the time of George Washington's birth and ends at approximately the time of Washington's death (although Chernow does explore Washington's legacy after his death briefly).  The highlights of what happened in between those two events are largely known as well: Washington married the widow Martha Custis, he served as the Commander-in-chief of the Continental Army and was the first president of the newly formed union.

But this book is 817 pages long so you know there is much more here than the basic details of Washington's life.  Chernow has drawn extensively from Washington's own papers and correspondence, as well as other biographies and the writings of other important players of the time, to craft an incredibly detailed look into Washington's life, thoughts, and motives.  It's my custom to take notes as I read, but inside of 200 pages I realized that I would never get through this book if I continued to do that--there is just too much information that was new to me in this book.  In fact, all of that information made it almost impossible to get through the book; I could only realistically absorb 15-20 pages at a sitting.

George Washington was not raised as a pampered child.  In fact, his mother, Mary, drilled habits of thrift and industry into young George, particularly after his father died.  She was a hard woman and Chernow says that there was always a "cool, quiet antagonism between Washington and his mother."  Chernow believes that Martha's treatment of young George created a man who was "overly sensitive to criticism and suffered from a lifelong need for approval" and that "George became an overly controlled personality and learned to master his temper and curb his tongue."

It was interesting to me to watch Washington, who liked his aristocratic airs and fine things, went from being a wealthy planter, interested primarily in accruing wealth and deeply attached to the British way of life, become a leader in a revolution.  His disillusion with with colonial rule began with his military service.  Because he lived in the colonies, he was never able to become a regular with the British army which rankled him.  He became further frustrated by his reliance on British brokers to purchase goods on his behalf and to sell his own.crops.  He became convinced that he was inferior goods were purchased for him and that he was not getting full price on his crops.  But much of this reliance on British brokers was the planters own fault; they relied heavily on the brokers for credit and Washington was no exception, frequently running up enormous debts while continuing to order extravagant goods.  Reading this was like reading about current events--clearly we didn't learn a lesson regarding credit from our forefathers  Curiously, the very war that had brought Washington so much fame (the French and Indian War) and also resulted in massive debt for the British, a burden the leaders decided to shift to their North American subjects which would eventually result in the "historic anomaly of a revolution inaugurated by affluent, conservative leaders."

Washington's dealings with his slaves and his feelings about slavery were also interesting.  On the one hand, he was a better than most slaveholder--he trained a lot of his slaves for trades, allowed them to fish, have gardens and keep their families together.  On the other hand, many of them lived under horrific conditions, he was strongly opposed to allowing blacks into the army during the revolution and he didn't free his own slaves until after Martha's death.  Washington, an exceedingly hard worker, grew frustrated with his slaves because he couldn't get them to work as hard as he thought they should.  The fact that there was no incentive for them to work harder during the long hours that they were working seemed to escape him.

The view I had of Washington being a great soldier was certainly altered by this book.  His first ever foray as the leader of a group of soldiers resulted in a massacre and, to be honest, a great many of his Revolutionary War decisions were even worse decisions.  And yet, Washington frequently made brilliant decisions and made excellent use of the spy network he developed.  He was also fearless in battle--never a leader to sit at the back of the battle and observe, Washington always rode straight into the fray, something that his soldiers found inspiring.  As a leader, Washington was often criticized during the war by his own officers and aides, members of Congress and the general populace.  To be fair, Washington was sometimes indecisive but he was also hampered throughout the war with undisciplined troops and a Congress that was unwilling to give Washington the necessary support.

 Fortunately for Washington, he was an even better politician than he was soldier.  He was masterful at getting what he wanted, often without even appearing to have worked to effect change, and he was not above stooping to less than scrupulous means to come out on top.  In that way, politics of the time were not much different that they are today.  When we think back on the founding fathers, we generally think of them as being of a like mind, which the single goal of creating this country.  But there were just as many differences of opinion, just as much backstabbing and just as much in-fighting 250 years ago as there is now.  Thomas Jefferson, for example, was not at all a fan of Washington's and even stayed away from Washington's memorial service after his death. 


I'm not one to keep a lot of the books that I have read - the classics, the books I truly loved, and the books I feel I'll refer back to in the future being the exception.  This is one of those.  I can't wait to pass it along to my dad and get his opinions.  Having been an American History teacher for 38 years, he may not have as much to learn from this one but I'm sure he'll enjoy it.  And now that I've read this one, I'm eager to pick up other biographies by Chernow.  Thanks TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour!

"Dead End Gene Pool" by Wendy Burden

Dead End Gene Pool by Wendy Burden
288 pages
Published April 2010 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher for the Spring Reading Series at Books On The Brain

Wendy Burden is the great- great- great- granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt. The Vanderbilt family was one of the wealthiest family in America for generations but by the time Wendy was born the fortunes of the various family branches were starting to dwindle and the gene pool was definitely getting shallow. Wendy's father was the Vanderbilt and when he committed suicide, his parents cut Wendy's mother off financially. She still managed to find enough money to keep herself in vacations, fancy clothes, and booze but she had almost no interest in parenting her three children. Wendy's grandparents insisted on having the children visit often and they certainly spoiled the children. But they weren't much better at paying attention to them. In fact Wendy says she felt much more as if the servants were her family.

What makes this book different from the other tales of poor little rich kids you've read? Burden's biting sense of humor and tough chick attitude. When she was young, she fancied herself to be Wednesday Addams, had an obsession with the macabre, and was something of a hellion. She frequently thought of ways to kill her brother (in the duck press for example); once, along with her brother took every bit of food out of the kitchen of one of her grandparents' homes to teach her grandfather and the chef a lesson; and, one summer, kept a collection of dead birds in various stages of decomposition.

Burden takes shots at everyone in her family and on the staff, but seems to take particular pleasure in going after her mother (who, frankly, seems to deserve everything she gets) who spends most of Burden's childhood telling her how fat she is and all of her own adult life in a drunken stupor.

I laughed out loud frequently and read bits of the book often to my husband (apparently it helps if you are actually reading the book to find it funny). I started to wonder if I might be a mean person to think it was so funny to make fun of a family that is so clearly screwed up. Seriously, if my kids made fun of people in the same way, I would scold them.

As the book progressed, the suicidal tendencies and the effects of the family's alcoholism started to take their toll and the humor did start to seem mean to me. It was a little painful to watch Burden grow up without any real emotional attachment to anyone in her family. The pacing of the book felt a bit uneven to me, slowing as the book went on, and the stories lost much of their bite.

Do not go into the book expecting to learn about the history of the Vanderbilt family; other than the initial run down of how the family descended down to Wendy, there is very little here to connect Burden to the Vanderbilt name.