James Phelan does what Clifford Irving couldn’t: he wrote a respectable biography of the final years of the great Howard Hughes. In the cultural landscape, there are two Hugheses—the monolithic business genius who amassed great wealth through his ingenuity in aircraft and tool manufacturing and the eccentric almost xenophobic shell of a man he became in his last years. Everyone knows the first half of the story, but only a select few got live access to the latter.

http://lifelongdewey.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/670-howard-hughes-by-james-phelan/ ( )

I've been fascinated with Howard Hughes since seeing "The Aviator." This story of his declining years is fascinating, and heartbreaking. Hughes' mental illness and enormous wealth combined to allow him to sink into a cocoon that blocked out the real world. His assistants and advisers clearly took advantage of his mental state, and numerous people including doctors who should have known better watched as the world's wealthiest man turned into an emaciated, malnourished, drug-addict who died in the type of condition that generally only occurs in the homeless or otherwise incapacitated. I suspect the full story of Howard Hughes will never be known, but this book is a captivating story of the distressing decline of his life. ( )