Rating: 
Summary: Palm Beach Is Always In Season
Review: I enjoy a good "dish" as much as the next gossip...but this is too much! The cloistered world of Palm Beach, when exposed to the light is small, petty, ignorant, and old, very old. Ronald Kessler perports to have written an expose on the FBI...and clsims this is an investigational book.....BAH! Let Palm Beach remain to itself......this book is a colossal waste of time, poorly written, cloying, and basically the author saying "look at me, I hang out with the rich and disfunctional". A waste of paper.
Rating: 
Summary: Why do I do this to myself?
Review: I enjoy a good "dish" as much as the next gossip...but this is too much! The cloistered world of Palm Beach, when exposed to the light is small, petty, ignorant, and old, very old. Ronald Kessler perports to have written an expose on the FBI...and clsims this is an investigational book.....BAH! Let Palm Beach remain to itself......this book is a colossal waste of time, poorly written, cloying, and basically the author saying "look at me, I hang out with the rich and disfunctional". A waste of paper.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting read but not earthshattering
Review: I initially picked up this book because I thought that life in Palm Beach would make for an interesting story. I was wrong. Dead wrong. Instead I find tales of deceit and lies interwoven to form a web of snobbery, elitism, and low self-esteem. Yes, low self-esteem. For if one really reads betwen the lines and asses the information in Kessler's book, one will find that the people are lacking inmany ways that money cannot fix. Overll the book was interesting. However, I feel that Kessler indeed got bogged down with too much namedropping and with too many vague and uninteresting characters. The story could have flowed a bit better and perhaps would have been more interesting had he gone more indepth about the bigotry that currently inhabits Palm Beach. Still, this was not Kessler's best work.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting read but not earthshattering
Review: I initially picked up this book because I thought that life in Palm Beach would make for an interesting story. I was wrong. Dead wrong. Instead I find tales of deceit and lies interwoven to form a web of snobbery, elitism, and low self-esteem. Yes, low self-esteem. For if one really reads betwen the lines and asses the information in Kessler's book, one will find that the people are lacking inmany ways that money cannot fix. Overll the book was interesting. However, I feel that Kessler indeed got bogged down with too much namedropping and with too many vague and uninteresting characters. The story could have flowed a bit better and perhaps would have been more interesting had he gone more indepth about the bigotry that currently inhabits Palm Beach. Still, this was not Kessler's best work.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book about Palm Beach
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed Ron Kessler's book, it is an accurate portrait of Palm Beach, as I remember it! My favorite stories surround Lorraine, who couldnt find a man in all of Palm Beach, I could identify with her, having a few horror stories of the male egos that live there of my own. It was funny and entertaining and the photos by Stephen Solomon are very good. I recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: An interesting topic but the words got in the way...
Review: I was hoping to settle in for a juicy read of the goings-on regarding the "fabulously" wealthy but was extremely disappointed with the author's lack of both content and style. Lamely reported ancedotes such as someone getting stuck with a group bar tab, fights breaking out between bar patrons and flowers being sent out to a table for a restaurant birthday celebration do NOT an interesting tome make and that's just in the first 40 pages! Also Mr. Kessler's interviews are reported in such a "jumpy" manner, one is never sure who is speaking at any given time. Irritating, clipped paragraphs abound which gives the book a "pasted together" feel. There is a treasure trove of subject matter in Palm Springs. Hopefully, someone will write about it someday in a more readable manner.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting & Well-written
Review: In THE SEASON, Ronald Kessler gives an interesting overview into life in Palm Beach. Palm Beach is very much America's Riviera, and Kessler offers his readers a bird's eye look into the resort's peculiar rhythms, and into its manners. In every situation, Palm Beach marches to the beat of its very own drummer, a drummer who is banging out his music with "D" color, Asscher-cut, flawless diamonds encrusted on platinum drumsticks. My biggest complaint is a backward compliment: I wish that this book were longer, and that it could have covered more of PB's inhabitants and their fascinating escapades. Still, no question that author Kessler has done a thorough job of communicating what life is like in this gilded community. If the book is somewhat superficial, nattering on about Grand Dukes and Duchesses, famous charity balls that raise almost no funds for their charities, rare cars, exclusive jewelers, dressmakers and decorators, well, this also perfectly reflects the superficiality of the town itself. I also found it disruptive to the flow of Kessler's text when he interjected personal comments about himself and his wife, such as the facts that he is Jewish while she is a member of the DAR. Really, this wasn't a family biography. Still, Kessler's own endnotes thank his editor for insisting on this literary device, so I guess that the inclusion of personal details was not his decision. For those who are curious about America's own Cannes-off-Interstate 95, THE SEASON is the best book around!
Rating:
Summary: Interesting & Well-written
Review: In THE SEASON, Ronald Kessler gives an interesting overview into life in Palm Beach. Palm Beach is very much America's Riviera, and Kessler offers his readers a bird's eye look into the resort's peculiar rhythms, and into its manners. In every situation, Palm Beach marches to the beat of its very own drummer, a drummer who is banging out his music with "D" color, Asscher-cut, flawless diamonds encrusted on platinum drumsticks. My biggest complaint is a backward compliment: I wish that this book were longer, and that it could have covered more of PB's inhabitants and their fascinating escapades. Still, no question that author Kessler has done a thorough job of communicating what life is like in this gilded community. If the book is somewhat superficial, nattering on about Grand Dukes and Duchesses, famous charity balls that raise almost no funds for their charities, rare cars, exclusive jewelers, dressmakers and decorators, well, this also perfectly reflects the superficiality of the town itself. I also found it disruptive to the flow of Kessler's text when he interjected personal comments about himself and his wife, such as the facts that he is Jewish while she is a member of the DAR. Really, this wasn't a family biography. Still, Kessler's own endnotes thank his editor for insisting on this literary device, so I guess that the inclusion of personal details was not his decision. For those who are curious about America's own Cannes-off-Interstate 95, THE SEASON is the best book around!
Rating:
Summary: The Season of Never Ending Narcissism and Brown Nosing
Review: Kessler's stories are amusing, and his writing is enough to keep the reader captivated, yet I left with the sense that Kessler spent the entire time ingratiating himself far too much with the PB society to be able accurately see it. Of course, he lauds himself with his occasional lapses into actual research, uncovering a few frauds for who they are, and he always has the standby of the anti-Semitism of the island to rave about, but the rest of the book he spends babbling about the color of the dress she wore at the party that evening. This is a cross between Dateline's sensationalism combined with Cosmopolitan's content.
Rating:
Summary: PLEASE!!
Review: Okay, I am going to settle this myth about Palm Beach. Ronald Kessler has no idea what he is talking about. In fact, nobody in Palm Beach would ever really allow a gossip writer to come in an expose all of our secrets. Its just not done that way. Many rewrites of the chapters were done until they contained little more than what you would hear sitting at a table at Taboo for lunch. Ronald Kessler drops so many names that it seems to become a guestbook for his adventures with the rich and famous. In my opinion, he needs to realize that he was not invited into this society like he thinks he was. Mr. Kessler was given little more than idle gossip to write about and he turned what he learned into a group of stories that sound interesting but have no substance to them. The only way to really know about Palm Beach is to come here and see what goes on. It is just like any other normal American town, only the other towns don't have two bit authors running through the streets with idolized vinettes about wealthy socialites. In other words, DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS BOOK!
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