Treasured Island: The Story of St. Barth... and Its Barbarians, Billionaires, and Beauties

Bestseller Gross (Flight of the WASP) offers a lavish if tedious history of luxury getaway St. Barthélemy. A St. Barth frequenter for “almost three dozen years,” the author begins with an overview of the Caribbean island’s modern-day milieu of financiers, Hollywood stars, children of dictators, and infamous Epstein pals including Ghislaine Maxwell. The book traces the island’s growth from “the Caribbean’s ugly duckling” to “an uber-luxury product,” an evolution spearheaded by Rémy de Haenen, an eccentric London-born “smuggler... and criminal” who, drawn to the island’s tax-free status, founded its first “jet-set guesthouse” in 1953. From there, Gross recaps the buildup of increasingly pricey resorts, villas, and restaurants (one of which offered “the world’s most expensive” lentil salad), as well as the rise of “antidevelopment sentiment” directed at more recent newcomers, especially Russian oligarchs. While the anecdotes occasionally exhilarate—particularly those concerning Jimmy Buffett’s raucous hotel, Autour du Roche, “the staging ground for some of the worst behavior I have ever seen,” per Buffett—the account gets bogged down in the minutiae of real estate deals, and its tallying of extreme wealth can veer into soul-sucking territory (the author’s propensity for referring to elites as “buccaneers” doesn’t help matters). This glimpse of the lifestyles of the rich and famous is more tiresome than expected. (June)