Author: Anderson Cooper, Katherine Howe
Published: September 21st 2021 by Harper
Format: Hardcover, 336 pages
Genre: Historical/Biography
First Sentence: When I was six, my father took me to Grand Central Terminal in New York to see the imposing bronze statue of my great-great-great-grandfather “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Blurb: When eleven-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt began to work on his father’s small boat ferrying supplies in New York Harbor at the beginning of the nineteenth century, no one could have imagined that one day he would, through ruthlessness, cunning, and a pathological desire for money, build two empires—one in shipping and another in railroads—that would make him the richest man in America. His staggering fortune was fought over by his heirs after his death in 1877, sowing familial discord that would never fully heal. Though his son Billy doubled the money left by “the Commodore,” subsequent generations competed to find new and ever more extraordinary ways of spending it. By 2018, when the last Vanderbilt was forced out of The Breakers—the seventy-room summer estate in Newport, Rhode Island, that Cornelius’s grandson and namesake had built—the family would have been unrecognizable to the tycoon who started it all.
Now, the Commodore’s great-great-great-grandson Anderson Cooper, joins with historian Katherine Howe to explore the story of his legendary family and their outsized influence. Cooper and Howe breathe life into the ancestors who built the family’s empire, basked in the Commodore’s wealth, hosted lavish galas, and became synonymous with unfettered American capitalism and high society. Moving from the hardscrabble wharves of old Manhattan to the lavish drawing rooms of Gilded Age Fifth Avenue, from the ornate summer palaces of Newport to the courts of Europe, and all the way to modern-day New York, Cooper and Howe wryly recount the triumphs and tragedies of an American dynasty unlike any other.
Written with a unique insider’s viewpoint, this is a rollicking, quintessentially American history as remarkable as the family it so vividly captures.(GoodReads)
My Opinion: Through lying, deception, and skullduggery, Vanderbilt is a story of people wanting want they could not have — money, love, safety, security, and attention, which there was never enough.
From reading other reviews, it appears as if many were looking for Gloria’s story, but this is, mostly, the story of the original Vanderbilt’s; the story Anderson wanted to learn for himself and to tell his son(s). There are the glamorous parts, which may have taken place at the Breakers or Marble House, or the varied other locations of the wealthy, but there are also the gritty parts of building an empire only to have it squandered.
The middle parts, does anyone care about a yachting race, can be long and drawn out, but they tell a story of generational dishonesty which runs rampant through the dynasty. Vanderbilt is yet another historical look at the Vanderbilt's—what they built and what they lost.
Blurb: When eleven-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt began to work on his father’s small boat ferrying supplies in New York Harbor at the beginning of the nineteenth century, no one could have imagined that one day he would, through ruthlessness, cunning, and a pathological desire for money, build two empires—one in shipping and another in railroads—that would make him the richest man in America. His staggering fortune was fought over by his heirs after his death in 1877, sowing familial discord that would never fully heal. Though his son Billy doubled the money left by “the Commodore,” subsequent generations competed to find new and ever more extraordinary ways of spending it. By 2018, when the last Vanderbilt was forced out of The Breakers—the seventy-room summer estate in Newport, Rhode Island, that Cornelius’s grandson and namesake had built—the family would have been unrecognizable to the tycoon who started it all.
Now, the Commodore’s great-great-great-grandson Anderson Cooper, joins with historian Katherine Howe to explore the story of his legendary family and their outsized influence. Cooper and Howe breathe life into the ancestors who built the family’s empire, basked in the Commodore’s wealth, hosted lavish galas, and became synonymous with unfettered American capitalism and high society. Moving from the hardscrabble wharves of old Manhattan to the lavish drawing rooms of Gilded Age Fifth Avenue, from the ornate summer palaces of Newport to the courts of Europe, and all the way to modern-day New York, Cooper and Howe wryly recount the triumphs and tragedies of an American dynasty unlike any other.
Written with a unique insider’s viewpoint, this is a rollicking, quintessentially American history as remarkable as the family it so vividly captures.(GoodReads)
My Opinion: Through lying, deception, and skullduggery, Vanderbilt is a story of people wanting want they could not have — money, love, safety, security, and attention, which there was never enough.
From reading other reviews, it appears as if many were looking for Gloria’s story, but this is, mostly, the story of the original Vanderbilt’s; the story Anderson wanted to learn for himself and to tell his son(s). There are the glamorous parts, which may have taken place at the Breakers or Marble House, or the varied other locations of the wealthy, but there are also the gritty parts of building an empire only to have it squandered.
The middle parts, does anyone care about a yachting race, can be long and drawn out, but they tell a story of generational dishonesty which runs rampant through the dynasty. Vanderbilt is yet another historical look at the Vanderbilt's—what they built and what they lost.
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