Nobody was closer to the source of Howard Hughes's vast influence than Robert Maheu, and nobody witnessed his catastrophic descent more closely. Maheu made all Hughes's business deals and represented him and his holdings to the outside world for 13 years. Now he tells the shocking true story behind the life and death of this powerful man. Photographs.

A spare and deeply-felt narrative about feeling like an outsider

Portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in the Martin Scorsese movie The Aviator, Howard Hughes is legendary as a playboy and pilot—but he is notorious for what he became: the ultimate mystery man. Citizen Hughes is the New York Times bestselling exposé of Hughes’s hidden life, and a stunning revelation of his “megalomaniac empire in the emperor’s own words” (Newsweek). At the height of his wealth, power, and invisibility, the world’s richest and most secretive man kept what amounted to a diary. The billionaire commanded his empire by correspondence, scrawling thousands of handwritten memos to unseen henchmen. It was the only time Howard Hughes risked writing down his orders, plans, thoughts, fears, and desires. Hughes claimed the papers were so sensitive—“the very most confidential, almost sacred information as to my innermost activities”—that not even his most trusted aides or executives were allowed to keep the messages he sent them. But in the early-morning hours of June 5, 1974, unknown burglars staged a daring break-in at Hughes’s supposedly impregnable headquarters and escaped with all the confidential files. Despite a top-secret FBI investigation and a million-dollar CIA buyback bid, none of the stolen secret papers were ever found—until investigative reporter Michael Drosnin cracked the case. In Citizen Hughes, Drosnin reveals the true story of the great Hughes heist—and of the real Howard Hughes. Based on nearly ten thousand never-before-published documents, more than three thousand in Hughes’s own handwriting, Citizen Hughes is far more than a biography, or even an unwilling autobiography. It is a startling record of the secret history of our times.

Collaboration between the public and private sectors helped the U.S. economy recover from its last period of economic malaise, and similar collaboration is needed today, according to a key participant in the 1980s–1990s competitiveness movement. In Building the Next American Century, Kent H. Hughes describes that movement, beginning with the conditions that stimulated it: stagflation in the early 1970s, declines in manufactured exports, and challenges from German and Japanese manufacturers. The United States responded with monetary and fiscal reform, technological innovation, and formation of a culture of lifelong learning. Although a great deal of leadership came from government, a new sense of partnership with the private sector and its leaders was crucial. Hughes attributes much of the national prosperity of the late 1990s to contributions from the private sectors. Hughes argues that a twenty-first-century competitiveness strategy with a system-wide approach to innovation, learning, and global engagement can meet today's challenges, even in the demanding environment shaped by national security concerns after 9/11.

Robert Hughes has trained his critical eye on many major subjects, from the city of Barcelona to the history of his native Australia. Now he turns that eye inward, onto himself and the world that formed him. Hughes analyzes his experiences the way he might examine a Van Gogh or a Picasso. From his relationship with his stern and distant father to his Catholic upbringing and school years; and from his development as an artist, writer, and critic to his growing appreciation of art and his exhilaration at leaving Australia to discover a new life, Hughes’ memoir is an extraordinary feat of exploration and celebration.