It offers a vivid portrait of how Epstein’s lewd and lecherous behaviour with young women was both widely known and widely celebrated by people who described themselves as his closest friends and associates.
Compiled by his then-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, the book contained everything from a handwritten letter from Epstein’s mother, to photos of scantily clad young women, to a cartoon drawing of Epstein lying in a beach chair getting what appears to be a nude massage from four topless women.
After an introduction by Maxwell, the book opens innocently with Epstein’s birth certificate and a letter from his mother, who wrote about his bar mitzvah and his being named one of Cosmopolitan magazine’s most eligible bachelors at the age of 27. There are report cards from his school and photos from his childhood.
As the book continues, the submissions become crude and dark, containing numerous references to Epstein’s sexual conquests and female genitalia.
Most notably, the book contains the now well-publicised poem to Epstein that bears Donald Trump’s name.
It is framed by a silhouette drawing of naked women and includes what appears to be Trump’s signature. Elsewhere there is an oversized cheque that purports to be Epstein jokingly selling a “fully depreciated” woman to Trump for US$22,500.
White House officials denied that Trump created the image of the naked woman.
But in keeping with the overall salacious tenure of the birthday book, that image and letter blend in.
Venture capitalist William Elkus described how Epstein managed to conjure a beautiful woman out of thin air during a visit to a farm town in Iowa, where it was hard to “tell the difference between the girls and the hogs”.
Elkus mused that Epstein’s skill in finding a “spectacular tall blonde” whom he later invited back with him to New York, suggested he had relied on “some long distance escort service”.
Elkus, reached by phone yesterday, said it was all meant to be a joke and said his note was a reference to Epstein’s “charisma, which was palpable”.
Another person named Leslie wrote, “I wanted to get you what you want”, so “here it is”. The brief, scrawled note is accompanied by a drawing of breasts.
And another contributor, who said he “agonised long and hard about what to write”, added photos of zebras and lions having sex, adding that the images “seemed more appropriate than anything I could put in words”.
Many of the contributions are disturbing.
In one letter, a person who signed only “Nick”, recounted an evening in London that left Epstein “howling with laughter”. That night, the contributor said, an “old man smiling sweetly” pulled down a woman’s panties and put his hand on her privates, only to find another man’s hand already there.
Another letter alludes to when Epstein, in the mid-1970s, first “discovered the Maxwell teenage daughter”.
Another poem ends noting that somehow at age 50, Epstein “has avoided the penitentiary”.
By his 55th birthday, Epstein would plead guilty in Florida to a state charge of soliciting prostitution from a teenage girl after securing a non-prosecution agreement from federal prosecutors. He would then spend nearly two years in jail and have to register as a sex offender.
But none of that stopped Epstein from beginning something of a second act in 2010, and the rich and famous continued to socialise with him — some almost right up until his arrest in July 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges.
Maxwell, who compiled the book, is serving a 20-year prison sentence for conspiring to sexually traffic minors.
One submission attributed to former President Bill Clinton focused on what he described as Epstein’s “childlike curiosity” and his “drive to make a difference”.
A spokesperson for Clinton has said the former President was unaware of Epstein’s crimes.
Other powerful people whose names are attached to tributes or mentioned in the book include retail billionaire Leslie Wexner, billionaire investor Leon Black, lawyer Alan Dershowitz and Jean Luc Brunel, a French modelling scout who died in 2022 by suicide in a French jail cell after being charged with raping teenage girls
There are also letters from women — some of his assistants and girlfriends — who might have also been victims of Epstein. The names of the women are redacted.
One woman wrote: “With you, dear Jeffrey, I laugh like a little girl and feel like a woman”. The next page in the book simply shows a hand drawn heart, a brief message and a photo of a woman’s buttocks in a thong bikini.
Another assistant described how Epstein transformed her life, from a 22-year-old woman who had been divorced and had worked in a hotel restaurant to a person who travelled the world meeting powerful people.
Among them, she listed Trump, Clinton, and “brilliant scientists, lawyers, and business men.”
The book closes with a photo of Epstein lounging in a hammock on what appears to be Little Saint James in the US Virgin Islands.
The section ends with a brief note from Maxwell, that reads: “The next fifty years will be even more wonderful”.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Matthew Goldstein, Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Steve Eder
Photographs by: XXX
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
