Word: astor
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Another centennial find is the reconstructed Fort Union Trading Post, built in 1829, near the confluence of the strategic Missouri and Yellowstone rivers in the northwest corner of North Dakota. Fort Union served as a linchpin in John Jacob Astor's lucrative beaver-fur and buffalo trade with the Assiniboin, Crow and Blackfeet Indians. In its halcyon days, which lasted a quarter- century, the post dominated the upper Missouri from behind an elegant, whitewashed palisade. Annual steamboats brought artists and ethnologists. The bourgeois, or superintendent, maintained a splendid table, and French wine flowed in an imposing residence topped with...
Britain's Minister of War John Profumo, husband of refined movie star Valerie Hobson, has been sharing the sexual favors of teen tart Christine Keeler with Soviet spy Eugene Ivanov . . . Keeler's blond pal Mandy Rice- Davies, 18, declared in court that she had bedded Lord Astor and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. . . . Mariella Novotny, who claims John F. Kennedy among her lovers, hosted an all-star orgy where a naked gent, thought to be film director and Prime Minister's son Anthony Asquith, implored guests to beat him . . . Osteopath and artist Stephen Ward, whose portrait subjects include eight members...
...attention to the veneer of the gilded age: high society in New York, Newport and Washington, with occasional forays into England and France. Vidal handles the gatherings of the very bright and very rich with meticulous attention to the furnishings and small outbursts of naughty wit. Mrs. John Jacob Astor appears, commenting on the trials of idle affluence: "Now I play bridge. It is exactly like being alive." Vidal also throws in teasers to keep knowledgeable readers on their toes. Roosevelt's outspoken daughter Alice is quoted on her desire to leave Washington: "Scenes of former glory sort of thing...
...gentleman spy was also native to the U.S. Founded in 1917, a clique known as the Room used the cover of international travel and scientific expeditions to gather information that it passed on to Washington and London. The Room's membership list read like the Social Register: Vincent Astor, Kermit Roosevelt, David Bruce (Andrew Mellon's son-in-law), Nelson Doubleday and a gilt edging of Wall Streeters and lawyers...
FLASHMAN AND THE DRAGON, George MacDonald Fraser THE GARDEN OF EDEN, Ernest Hemingway THE INHUMAN CONDITION, Clive Barker THE LAST BLOSSOM ON THE PLUM TREE, Brooke Astor MONKEYS, Susan Minot "Q" CLEARANCE, Peter Benchley...