First published 2021
Anderson Cooper partners with historian Katherine Howe to tell the story of America's most spectacular rise and fall. The saga begins with eleven-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt working his father's ferry in New York Harbor. Through ruthless ambition and an obsession with wealth, Cornelius built shipping and railroad empires that made him the richest American of his era. His death in 1877 triggered bitter inheritance battles among his children. While his son Billy doubled the fortune, later generations found increasingly extravagant ways to spend it. The family moved from Manhattan's rough docks to Fifth Avenue mansions, from Newport's grand estates to European courts. By 2018, the last Vanderbilt had lost The Breakers, the seventy-room Newport palace built by Cornelius's grandson. Cooper brings an insider's perspective to this uniquely American story of ambition, excess, and decline. He and Howe chronicle how one family became synonymous with Gilded Age capitalism and high society, then watched their empire crumble across generations.
Genres: biography, 20th-century, business, american, 21st-century, 19th-century, family-drama, american-history
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: ambition, decline, excess
Setting: Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, Newport, New York Harbor
Period: 1877, 2018, Gilded Age
317 pages · Hardcover · Harper