Rating: 
Summary: Very readable biography
Review: I have been waiting for a book on the life of Howard Hughes and this is it. It is very readable. It ties in aviation history if you are interested in that. I live in Southern California and again the history of the movie industry of Hughe's time and his impact is told along with his life story. This is an easy read with some great black and white photos included.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Read about a Strange Man
Review: I just finished reading Hughes the Private Diaries....What a trip. I could not put it down. What a strange man he was with a genius for business. I still do not think I know the man but I think noone ever will. He truly was an enigma wrapped in a riddle surrounded by a mystery. I only wish that Hollywood would do a film that would capture this incredible individual as much as this book does.
This book reads like a novel because Howard Hughes' story was in essence a "fiction".
It is truly amazing how he could be so lucid and eloquent at one moment and then so "crazy" the next. What was going on inside him that drove him to such contridictions?
I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys good writing and good biography. But, especially I recommend it to those who want to learn more about Howard Robards Hughes.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Read about a Strange Man
Review: I just finished reading Hughes the Private Diaries....What a trip. I could not put it down. What a strange man he was with a genius for business. I still do not think I know the man but I think noone ever will. He truly was an enigma wrapped in a riddle surrounded by a mystery. I only wish that Hollywood would do a film that would capture this incredible individual as much as this book does.
This book reads like a novel because Howard Hughes' story was in essence a "fiction".
It is truly amazing how he could be so lucid and eloquent at one moment and then so "crazy" the next. What was going on inside him that drove him to such contridictions?
I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys good writing and good biography. But, especially I recommend it to those who want to learn more about Howard Robards Hughes.
Rating: 
Summary: 4 1/2 stars. Fascinating
Review: If you're looking for a good biography on Howard R Hughes, look no further, because this is the one you'll want. Richard Hack writes in an open and laid-back manner making it all easy to enjoy and absorb. The subject manner certainly makes for entertaining reading itself. This most noted of eccentrics will captivate you as well as disgust you. Hack takes you inside the Hughes empire and paints a very good picture of the how and why of his world. If not for Hughes inheritance from his father-owner of the Hughes Tool Co-you most likely will never have heard of Howard Hughes. Basically Howard himself had no business acumen. His life does read somewhat like a fairy tale in that most of the things he wished for he got. From movie starlets to hotels and casinos. Money can truly buy most things. Unfortunately he wasn't psychologically stable for the last half of his life and this caused him and those around him much misery. Form whatever opinion you like about Hughes, but after reading this biography, the opinion you form will be a strong one. It was a well-written biography that lagged just a little on the editing.Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Very readable biography
Review: Judging from the interest in this self-described "definitive biography," Howard Hughes, dead for more than 25 years, remains an object of American fascination. Hughes' downward spiral from wealthy, handsome playboy-pilot-film producer-media star to even wealthier barking-mad recluse has been told in numerous books and television programs. I was suspicious when leafing through the 12 pages of "exclusive" photographs in the book to see that only half featured photos of Hughes and none of those were new. The remainder were of some of the women in Hughes' life and look like standard Hollywood publicity shots. Richard Hack's biography begins well with an engrossing description of Hughes' childhood years. But as it continues to cover the millionaire's Glamourous Phase in the 1920s and 1930s, it seems like a rehash of the book by Noah Dietrich, Hughes' right-hand man in the period, published in 1972 but here there is a lot more emphasis on the subject's romantic life. More annoying than the author's failure to shed any light on the "why" of Hughes' life is his total technical ignorance of aviation, the field where Hughes was most accomplished. Richard Hack falls down almost completely here and it brings into question the accuracy of the rest of the book. For example, he does not mention that Hughes flew as an airline copilot under an assumed name to build up flying time. There is almost nothing on the solid technical achievement in building the H-1 racer, an airplane both ahead of its time and a monument to craftsmanship. He suggests that the decision to build the D-2 reconnaisance airplane out of Duramold was ridiculed by generals because wood was known "for cracking under stress and breaking under fire." There is nothing wrong with wood as an airplane material, as the British Mosquito bomber indicates. But Hack would not be aware of this as he refers to the Royal Air Force as the Royal Air Corps, its World War One designation. There are many other factual errors. Grover Loening is described in a footnote as "credited as the engineering genius behind the autogyro, forerunner of the helicopter." Loening was a brilliant engineer, noted for his work in seaplanes, but Spaniard Juan de la Cierva was the inventor, developer and promoter of the autogyro. And what is one to make of the passage on p. 187 where Hughes Aircraft receives a "contract to place its all-weather interceptors in Lockheed's F-94 fighters?" An interceptor is a type of airplane not a box of equipment. There is no mention of the glorious steam car disaster so well described by Noah Dietrich who was present but instead we are endlessly subjected to Hughes' efforts at proposing marriage. And Mr. Hack's knowledge of recent history is pretty shakey too. He describes a meeting in Miami between Robert Maheu and Sam Giancana shortly after the Kennedy inauguration to discuss killing Fidel Castro. Hack says "the operation became known as the Bay of Pigs..." This is just nonsense. A definitive biography? The jury remains out. But it is clear that Howard Hughes would have been better viewed by the posterity that was so important to him if he had died young in one of his airplane crashes. At least the Howard Hughes Medical Institute has $12 billion to do some good. After reading this book, one can only feel that it is a print equivalent of junk food. Ask yourself: is the life of a person as messed-up as Howard Hughes' worth wading through 400 pages of my time? Perhaps not. But at least we can always savour such literary gems of Richard Hack as "Love was as alien to him as a jelly donut to a Slovakian rebel."
Rating:
Summary: Intimate and Grand
Review: To truthfully and fully expose someone's life in 400 pages, especially someone as enigmatic as Howard Hughes, is a virtually impossible task. But Hack's narrative paints a picture that alternates between the intimate and the grand. We can see Hughes' boyish charms seduce Hollywood starlets and watch the world's reaction as he breaks aviation records. There are fine details about his daily life, as well as dramatic accounts of his business dealings. The book also revels in his love life and eventually tapers into Hughes' final years of hopping about the globe, escaping imagined persecution. Hack remains grounded to the facts, referencing the hundreds of memos left behind by his associates and Hughes himself. And interestingly, the truth is as compelling as any work of fiction out there.
Rating:
Summary: Masterful
Review: Well-written, well-paced, and well-researched. I only wish there had been more photos of the airplanes mentioned in the text.
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