Saints, Sinners and Scalawags: A Lifetime in Stories

By Thibaut De Saint Phalle

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0963641387
• ISBN13: 9780963641380
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Hobblebush Books
• Length: 577 Pages
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A tasty & detailed memoir of the 20th Century

This is a delightful memoir and a very good read. The Twentieth Century sweeps through this book in all directions. Yet Saint Phalle manages to render a charming and intimate account of everything from the Roaring Twenties doings of his French aristocratic family to Depression life as a willful, impecunious college student who happened to find work tutoring the family that owns The New York Times. The author was an American spy in wartime China, an international corporate lawyer in postwar America, a flirtatious widower at the dawn of the Sixties, and an economic observer whose previous books contain a lot of good history, not to mention prescient and frightening intimations about what is happening to today's dollar.Saint Phalle visited Dien Bien Phu as an American agent years before France's defeat there. He knew JFK and that President's methmaster "Doctor Feelgood." He was at Jerusalem's King David Hotel when Menachem Begin & Yitzhak Shamir blew it up. He was in Moscow the day of the attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, toured the rebel Parliament before it was reduced by force. He helped overturn Tammany Hall in Fifties New York, served on Jimmy Carter's ExIm Bank Board, oversaw construction of a resort hotel in the Virgin Islands, got Brigitte Bardot to play with a hula-hoop on the Champs Elysees so a medical supplies client could sell its defective plastic tubing. His sense of humor prompted a few excellent gaffes along the way; he broaches that bombing at a lunch with Prime Minister Begin. Saint Phalle rarely plays victim when everything goes wrong and he credits a lot of his success to good luck.He's a very good writer. SAINTS, SINNERS AND SCALAWAGS welcomes us in a relaxed and informative style. Saint Phalle has a way of presenting colorful vignettes with economy. Even when he writes about business, his stories move well; he likes interesting people and his career path took him through a lot of moral minefields in fascinating places. His writing is both dry and suggestive, and he customarily leaves us wanting more. He has the taste to leave a lot of things unsaid and the skill to let us know what they are. At twice the length, this would be a very readable book.Nothing less than a delightful read!

A LIFETIME OF STORIES

SAINTS,SINNERS AND SCALAWAGS: A LIFETIME OF STORIES IS A BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN COLLECTION OF MEMOIRES WHICH MIRROR THE AUTHOR'S LIFE AND THE PEOPLE AND THE PLACES THAT WERE IMPORTANT TO HIM. THE BOOK BRINGS PAST HISTORY TO LIFE AND GIVES THE READER A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF THE PLACES AND MOTIVES OF PEOPLE WHO CREATED HISTORY. ELIZABETH McINTOSH, EDITOR, OSS SOCIETY NEWSLETTER AND AUTHOR: "SISTERHOOD OF SPIES"

Tales of a lifetime

If de Saint Phalle is difficult to define in simple terms, so is his new book,"Saints, Sinners and Scalawags: a lifetime in Stories". The memoire is a collection of fascinating tales offering the reader a look into a spectacularly adventurous life. Meeting the gentlemanly former corporate lawyer and investment banker, one might not imagine he would write a first person account that includes shrunken heads, murder in Hong Kong, sabotage and fortunetellers. Many of the people de Saint Phalle has encountered are those who shaped our political landscape during the second half of the 20th century. Saint Phalle is a member of one of France's oldest families traced back to the 9th century, served in the OSS in China during the war, was decorated for bravery and received France's highest award, The Legion of Honor.

A Delightful Read

Some books tell a tale. Others provide a perspective on history. Others reveal intriguing plots, high adventure and fascinating locales.This one does it all, and is a delightful read, to boot.For anyone who lived through the tumult of WWII or who wishes a fascinating perspective on the events of the past half-century which today shape our future, this volume presents a master storyteller and participant at his best. Long an acknowledged expert in international business and finance, Saint Phalle departs his scholarly dissertations to wander with the reader through episodes of a fascinating life at the center of tumultuous world events -- whether at war, with the OSS in Asia, in the boardrooms of an evolving post-war Europe or with some of the more interesting figures of modern events.His generous narrative is compelling, and is touched by his wisdom and wit.This meaty work is both rewarding reading, and a volume which invited this reader to return and re-read a number of its passages. I only hope that the author has another volume up his sleeve, as it is clear to me that he has many other remarkable stories to tell, and I am anxious to read them all!