Vanderbilt Vanderbilt

Vanderbilt

    • 4.1 • 406 Ratings
    • $19.99

Publisher Description

New York Times bestselling author and journalist Anderson Cooper teams with New York Times bestselling historian and novelist Katherine Howe to chronicle the rise and fall of a legendary American dynasty—his mother’s family, the Vanderbilts.

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.

GENRE
History
NARRATOR
AC
Anderson Cooper
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
08:50
hr min
RELEASED
2021
September 21
PUBLISHER
HarperAudio
SIZE
456.5
MB

Customer Reviews

elinlarson ,

Your father’s son

Wow, Anderson, what a fabulous gift for your children as it meticulously recounts historical information while painting a vivid picture in the mind of the reader. I so enjoyed this book and appreciated the details of locations of where these architectural masterpieces once stood and the details of the lives of the people who passed through them. Just a really great book. You are your father’s son.

oliverisawesome ,

Boring

Most of the book is extremely boring. The only good parts is Anderson talking about the more recent history.

Liefiepie ,

Too much information in each sentence

I am sure if you were interested in the Vanderbilt family, this is the book for you. Andersen Cooper narration is great - I love his voice - but there is simply too much information for me in each chapter- too hard to digest

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