The Contrarian: inside the life, lawsuits and liberties of Peter Thiel

One of the most expensive houses in Washington D.C., if you’re counting by the biggest sale in the last year, is at 2850 Woodland Drive, about ten minutes northwest of the city. It went for $13 million and looks like an American version of a French country home — Disneyland Versailles. It has seven bedrooms and ten bathrooms, two marble terraces, statue fountains, an outdoor pool, a 12-seat cinema, an acre of bucolic gardens, staff quarters, dressing rooms with enough wardrobe space to kit out an army, and ceilings that go all the way up into the stratosphere.