Jerry Oppenheimer
HOUSE OF HILTON
Delivering beach-read heat in early winter takes sizzling subject matter, which Jerry Oppenheimer has in spades in his EXTREMELY unauthorized family biography House of Hilton—From Conrad to Paris: A Drama of Wealth, Power, and Privilege. Like the proverbial car crash, it's impossible to look away from this cautionary tale outlining the many ways in which money not only can't buy happiness, but can't even provide the illusion of class. Seen in the context of a scandalous coterie of grasping child stars (mom "Little Kathy," not to be confused with mobster-marrying maternal grandmother "Big Kathy"), duplicitous patriarchs (the original Conrad Hilton, a publicly "devout" Catholic with a penchant for hard-partying and skirt-chasing), among many others, the puzzling phenomenon that is Paris Hilton (no intelligence, no talent, no problem!) begins to seem no longer inexplicable, but inevitable. Read it and weep, or laugh, depending on your stomach for soulless excess.
