The Eccentric Billionaire

Overview: He was hated, feared, and admired. The country's second-richest man at the time of his death, John D. MacArthur (1897-1978) also became one of its great benefactors. Every year, some two dozen American writers, artists, intellectuals, and scientists receive as much as a half million dollars in grants known as the "genius awards" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. But MacArthur was not the benevolent figure he would seem. Now, in this first full biography of John D. MacArthur as he really was, Nancy Kriplen reveals the man behind the myth-the often vulgar,…