Onassis: An Extravagant Life by Frank BradyMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
The man is obviously fascinating, and not really knowing much about him beforehand, I certainly appreciated that.
However, I can't say I liked the book itself. This book didn't delve deep at all, with all associated characters basically being neglected aside from their direction interaction with Onassis. So his wives, children and parents are basically just mentioned at intervals (Jackie Kennedy gets more than anyone else, but even then it would have been nice to know how she was affected after his death). Even the rift with his father is quite mysterious, and then sort of dropped (I don't believe his father's death is even mentioned).
Also, some of the details of his life seem a bit stretched. I doubt he "learned Italian fluently" thanks to the boat ride across the Atlantic and a week staying with an Italian family. I doubt even more that he, a Greek speaker, learned English and German fluently working as a phone operator in Argentina listening to other peoples' phone calls. All of this makes me doubt whether he really slept 3-4 hours per night, like the book claims.
Having said that, the book doesn't hide how he beat women, had terrible ethics (see the whale hunting section), and was all-around very devious.
Anyway, so if there is another, more in-depth biography of this man I might read it, because he is obviously fascinating. Having been born in luxury, witnessing the ethnic cleansing of his people around him, escaping with nothing to Greece, then escaping once again to Argentina, only to build a huge empire and become the richest man in the world, is quite impressive.
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