Summary of Tom Sancton's The Last Baron

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Sample Book Insights:

#1 In the 1970s, Baron Empain was the head of an industrial empire that comprised 174 companies and employed 136,000 workers in fields ranging from mining and metallurgy to banking, heavy construction, shipbuilding, armaments, and nuclear energy.

#2 France was experiencing a decade of political transition. The turmoil caused by the Paris-centered student uprising of May 1968 had settled down, though it hastened Charles de Gaulle’s departure from power in 1970.

#3 Empain was a man who valued privacy and discretion over flashy displays of wealth. He took pride in his title of nobility, though it did not descend from any ancient aristocracy. His life was carefully compartmentalized: he kept his family, his colleagues, his gambling partners, his mistresses, and his hunting buddies in separate, hermetically sealed boxes.

#4 Wado and his family spent their annual summer vacations at a villa rented from the American railroad heiress Florence Gould. They would pass their days on the beach hobnobbing with their rich friends, but there was one woman who preferred to play with the men: Shahnaz.