Smart, educated, and accomplished people--often the pillars of society--sometimes behave in the most uncharacteristic and fascinating ways. These are stories of adultery, perversion, shameless greed, theft, and deception--scandal in its rawest forms--that have brought down presidents, prime ministers, clergy, and famous people from every walk of life. The gripping dramas climax in catastrophic exposures and career-destroying indiscretions that rival great fiction and are all the more astounding because they are seminal moments in our history.