The Season: Inside Palm Beach and America's Richest Society

by Ronald Kessler

Palm Beach is known around the world as the most wealthy, glamorous, opulent, decadent, self-indulgent, sinful spot on earth. With their beautiful 3.75 square-island constantly in the media glare, Palm Beachers protect their impossibly rich society from outside scrutiny with vigilant police, ubiquitous personal security staffs, and screens of tall hedges encircling every mansion. To this bizarre suspicious, exclusive world, New York Times bestselling author Ronald Kessler brought his charm, insight, and award-winning investigative skills, and came to know Palm Beach, its celebrated and powerful residents, and its exotic social rituals as no outside writer ever has. In this colorful, entertaining, and compulsively readable book. Kessler reveals the inside story of Palm Beach society as it moves languidly through the summer months, quickens in the fall, and shifts into frenetic high speed as the season begins in December, peaks in January and February, and continues into April. When unimaginable wealth combines with unlimited leisure time oil an island barely three times the size of New York's Central Park, human foibles and desires, lust and greed, passion and avarice, become magnified and intensified. Like laboratory rats fed growth hormones, the 9,800 Palm Beach residents--87 percent of whom are millionaires--exhibit the most outlandish extremes of their breed. To tell the story, Kessler follows four Palm Beachers through the season. These four characters--the reigning queen of Palm Beach society, the night manager of Palm Beach's trendiest bar, a gay "walker" who escorts wealthy women to balls, and a thirty--six-year-old gorgeous blonde who says she "can't find a guy in Palm Beach"--know practically everyone on the island and tell what goes on behind the scenes. Interweaving the yarns of these unfor-gettable figures with the lifestyle, history, scandals, lore, and rituals of a unique island of excess, The Season creates a powerful, seamless, juicy narrative that no novelist could dream up.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Ronald Kessler is the New York Times bestselling author of 21 non-fiction books about the Trump White House, Secret Service, FBI, and CIA.

Kessler began his career as a journalist in 1964 on the Worcester Telegram, followed by three years as an investigative reporter and editorial writer with the Boston Herald. In 1968, he joined the Wall Street Journal as an investigative reporter in the New York bureau. He became an investigative reporter with the Washington Post in 1970 and continued in that position until 1985.

Kessler's new book is "The Trump White House: Changing the Rules of the Game."

Kessler has won eighteen journalism awards, including two George Polk awards--for national reporting and for community service. Kessler has also won the American Political Science Association's Public Affairs Reporting Award, the Associated Press' Sevellon Brown Memorial Award, and Washingtonian magazine's Washingtonian of the Year award. Franklin Pierce University awarded him the Marlin Fitzwater Medallion for excellence as a prolific author, journalist, and communicator. He is listed in Who's Who in America.

"Ron Kessler...has enjoyed a reputation for solid reporting over the past four decades." Lloyd Grove, The Daily Beast. "Kessler's such a skilled storyteller, you almost forget this is dead-serious nonfiction..." Newsweek. "[Ronald Kessler] is the man who broke the story about the [Secret Service prostitution] episode in Cartagena...." New York Times. "His [Kessler's] book quotes both flattering and unflattering observations about presidents of both parties." FactCheck.org. "[Ronald Kessler] is one of the nation's top investigative journalists." Fox & Friends. "Ron Kessler appears to get everything first." Slate.

Ron Kessler lives with his wife Pamela Kessler in the Washington, D.C. area. Also an author and former Washington Post reporter, Pam Kessler wrote "Undercover Washington: Where Famous Spies Lived, Worked and Loved." His daughter Rachel Kessler, an independent public relations consultant, and son Greg Kessler, an artist, live in New York.

Reviews

[Cheryl Cusmano]

Don’t waste your time unless you love a name dropping, petty expose of the Uber rich as they struggle with vast wealth and extreme boredom. Adultry, plastic surgery, extravagant living, and general unhappiness rein in this posh ocean side community. The only pro is learning a few statistics about this world renowned playground of the globe’s privledged few.

[Erin]

This one was on a reading list at the library and caught my attention. Curious to see how the other half lives (especially since I'm currently a poor grad student), I picked it up. Turns out, the other half are more than a little yawn-inducing. I'm sure Mr. Kessler was trying to play up the outrageous amounts of money and differences in lifestyles in his stories of fancy parties, private planes, and instilled social standards, but truly, one can only take so many fawning pages on the Donald before it all begins to blur together. Like many of the people populating Palm Beach, this book just tries too hard.

[J]

Interesting look at life in Palm Beach during the social season. Along with juicy gossip and fabulous parties, Kessler subtly but repeatedly exposes the underside of their lives (sexual promiscuity, racism and unhappiness). It made me wonder if I'd want to be part of it all.

[Jon]

Light, unreflective, unintentionally vulgar recounting of life in Palm Beach (which to be fair seems a vulgar place). Author clearly traded fulsome coverage for access. Laudatory passages on Donald Trump and his "beautiful" family have not aged well.

[Beth]

Interesting

I enjoyed reading it as I have a home near Palm Beach. I enjoyed getting the down-low about what goes on there.

[Melissa Akin]

Interesting read on the high society of west palm beach

[Kim]

interesting book