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Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty by [Anderson Cooper, Katherine Howe]

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Rating: 4.3 (14821 reviews)

Katherine Howe

Anderson Cooper

Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty Kindle Edition

by Anderson Cooper (Author), Katherine Howe (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.3 14,821 ratings

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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.

One of the Washington Post's Notable Works of Nonfiction of 2021

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.

Print length

336 pages
Language

English
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Publication date

September 21, 2021
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36630 KB
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Popular Highlights in this book

What are popular highlights?

The ideology of New York City was, is, and probably always will be profit.
Highlighted by 540 Kindle readers
In its 77 years of existence, The Breakers saw the equivalent of nearly $218 million evaporate into thin air.
Highlighted by 511 Kindle readers
This is the story of the extraordinary rise and epic fall of the Vanderbilt dynasty. This is the story of the greatest American fortune ever squandered.
Highlighted by 370 Kindle readers

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Splendid. . . . haunting and beautifully written. . . . This is a terrific book.” -- Washington Post

"An incredible story." -- People

“A dramatic tale expertly told of rapacious ambition, decadent excess, and covert and overt tyranny and trauma. . . . With resplendent detail, the authors capture the gasp-eliciting extravagance of the Vanderbilt Gilded Age mansions. . . . With its intrinsic empathy and in-depth profiles of women, this is a distinctly intimate, insightful, and engrossing chronicle of an archetypal, self-consuming American dynasty. . . . Irresistible.” -- Booklist (starred review)

“Marked by meticulous research and deep emotional insight, this is a memorable chronicle of American royalty.” -- Publishers Weekly

“A remarkably frank and tender undertaking.”
-- The New York Times on The Rainbow Comes and Goes

"Meaningful, revealing." -- The Wall Street Journal on The Rainbow Comes and Goes

“Fascinating, forthright, philosophical, and inspiring, these mother-and-son musings on family, life, death, forgiveness, fame, and perseverance are at once uniquely personal and deeply human.” -- Booklist (starred review) on The Rainbow Comes and Goes

“Cooper is a storyteller with plenty of heart. . . . A smart, soulful page-turner. . . . Strong stuff, and in Cooper’s hands, well told.” -- People on Dispatches from the Edge

“His vignettes from the world’s horrorscapes rise above the swagger of many journalistic memoirs because Cooper writes with competence as well as feeling. . . . Intriguing.” -- Washington Post Book World on Dispatches from the Edge --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Anderson Cooper joined CNN in 2001 and has anchored his own program, Anderson Cooper 360°, since March 2003. Cooper has won 18 Emmys and numerous other major journalism awards. He lives in New York with his son, Wyatt.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08R3WD7WD
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper (September 21, 2021)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 21, 2021
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 36630 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 336 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #4,688 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #3 in Biographies of Business Professionals
- #6 in Biographies of the Rich & Famous
- #6 in History eBooks of Women

Customer Reviews:
4.3 14,821 ratings

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Anderson Cooper
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Anderson Cooper joined CNN in 2001 and has anchored his own program, Anderson Cooper 360°, since March 2003. Cooper has won 18 Emmys and numerous other major journalism awards. He lives in New York with his son, Wyatt.
See more on the author's page
Katherine Howe
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Katherine Howe is a New York Times bestselling and award-winning writer of historical fiction. Her best known books are The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, which debuted at #2 on the New York Times bestseller list in 2009 and was named one of USA Today’s top tend books of the year, and Conversion, which received the 2015 Massachusetts Book Award in young adult literature. In 2014 she edited The Penguin Book of Witches for Penguin Classics, a primary source reader on the history of witchcraft in England and North America. The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs, her latest novel for adults, was published by Henry Holt and Co in summer 2019. Her next project is The Vanderbilts: an American Dynasty, a popular history co-authored with CNN's Anderson Cooper, coming from Harper in fall 2021. She has appeared on “Good Morning America,” “CBS This Morning,” NPR’s “Weekend Edition,” the BBC, the History Channel, and the Travel Channel, and she hosted “Salem: Unmasking the Devil” for National Geographic. Her fiction has been translated into over twenty languages. She holds a BA in art history and philosophy from Columbia and an MA in American and New England studies from Boston University, and she has taught American history, visual culture, and writing at BU and Cornell. A native Houstonian, she lives in New England and New York City with her family, where she is at work on her next novel. She also puts hot sauce on everything.
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Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5

14,821 global ratings

5 star		58%
4 star		25%
3 star		12%
2 star		3%
1 star		2%

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robin

loved the writing style

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 23, 2023

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Interesting history of larger than life characters. Deft, amusing, entertaining, and somewhat sad. Life the .1% lived and the excesses of great wealth with the drama they lived. Hard to relate to until the writing turns to small children growing up in these circumstances.

One person found this helpful

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Just People

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 23, 2023

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I loved this book because I learned about Anderson Cooper’s ancestors, whom I never thought about before. It’s a readable, interesting book with much name-dropping, because after all, the famous we’re friends of the famous Vanderbilts. It’s historical too. There’s much about the business and society during the Guilded Age and beyond.

One person found this helpful

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rrosenyc

life is better than fiction

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 6, 2023

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Cooper has written a fantastic biography of the Vanderbilt’s rise and fall. And being the son of Gloria Vanderbilt, he had a front row street at a time when just their name remains, yet not fortune. And to his credit, he was on the fringe of that part of his family but it’s still 1/2 him. And once he lost his mother, he chose to dig deeper, to understand the family’s rise and fall, using the scandals and big personalities as touchstones of the book.

He also wove in the history of New York City which has much of its character derived from this leading family during the Gilded Age. And with Cooper’s wit, knowledge and writing prowess, he gave a front row seat to the reader.

And what a story? Makes you realize fact is better than fiction and had me longing to be apart of that generation of society leaders than what we have today with Kardashian. tic toc influencers, and the general tech world which has little for advancing culture.

2 people found this helpful

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Michael

Fascinating and Odd

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 21, 2023

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A fascinating inside look at the machinations of NYC high society from the Guilded Age, through the first half of the 20th Century, as seen through the lens of a branch of the Vanderbilt dynasty. Cooper's descriptions are well and truly excellent. It's hard to understand the Amazon claim that the book is a bestseller in the history of railroads, as there is just not much in the book about railroads. There are some behind-the-scenes looks at The Breakers, but oddly, no mention whatsoever of that other, great Vanderbilt estate, Biltmore and it's Vanderbilt connections. Very strange, especially since Biltmore remains in the Vanderbilt family and is managed by some of the descendents.

11 people found this helpful

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Nunya Bidness

Very thoughtful book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 28, 2023

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I thought this book was a rollicking goodread. Anderson Cooper is at turnd wry and funny when recounting his family's tumultuous, dysfunctional, tragic and interesting history. He doesn't write it as if he were rich and Out of touch. He writes it with the full understanding that money comes and goes and definitely doesn't make people happy. I would totally recommend this book.

3 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 18, 2023

Verified Purchase

The book was in perfect condition.

One person found this helpful

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Plato Closeted

Wonderful, Eye Opening

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 10, 2023

Verified Purchase

Thank you, Anderson Cooper, for this very thorough glimpse, though glimpse it can't help but be, into the lives of some unique family members. How did it happen? How can a fortune of this magnitude be built? There are some clues here but no real explanations on that. Instead it's more about the individual personalities, desires, faults and accomplishments. And very much a page turner, not dry at all.

One person found this helpful

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Mac

Well done.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 22, 2023

Verified Purchase

Meticulously researched, this book is much more than an historical account. The authors' work diligently conveys the personalities, the drive, and the failures of the family members. They provide stunning insight into one of America's wealthiest families, but occasionally lapse into "gossip."

2 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

the1andonly

Brilliant!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 17, 2021

Verified Purchase

This writing team have produced the best, most interesting and most human of the books that I have read about the super-rich American families of the 19th century. Mr Cooper's family insight is invaluable. A must for anyone interested in this period.

2 people found this helpful

S C Loughridge

Different but good

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 18, 2022

Verified Purchase

Enjoyed it. Thought he more business talk but is v people and character oriented.vaccinating and sad and some lovely writing

One person found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Interesing book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 1, 2022

Verified Purchase

Interesting book about the Vanderbilt family, however sometimes a bit too long and i would be interested in understanding more the key factors of the increase of wealth and then decrease

marionAmazon Customer

interesting read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 3, 2021

Verified Purchase

the style of writing and the eye for detsil of the history of the timr

Linda Pfeiffer

Little new information on the Vanderbilt's rise or fall

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on November 22, 2021

Verified Purchase

If you thought you were going to learn something new from Anderson Cooper on the eventual fall of the Vanderbilt Empire, think again. Scrolling through the acknowledgements, bibliography, index, photos, and about the author pages I realized they had taken up about 17% of the book. So there was much research done by Katherine Howe and perhaps Anderson Cooper, but these were mostly previous publications of books. There was some interesting information about the founder known as the Commodore and how he hoped to have his fortune passed down to only the eldest child (Male if possible) of each new generation so that the money would remain an immense fortune. But it seems the subsequent Vanderbilts didn't follow his example and less than 150 years later, most of the money is gone disbursed by immense over spending on parties, and luxuries of every nature and I have to assume bad business decisions though this is not elaborated on in the book. In the end, it seems only Gloria Vanderbilt, Cooper's mother, is talked about as though she were the last Vanderbilt left. I'm sure that's not possible, but we didn't hear about any others.
Having seen the show "Nothing left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt and Anderson Cooper, I recognize their mutual love for each other as mother and son. Cooper's father died, and his brother is also gone, so his relationship with his mother was paramount. This may have been the last memorial to his mother who passed away in 2019 and I get that. But I wanted more history and more information about how one family squandered such a massive fortune so quickly.

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