Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
Anderson Cooper
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. more
317 pages, Hardcover
First published Harper
3.83
Rating
46057
Ratings
3687
Reviews
Anderson Cooper
11 books 889 followers
Anderson Hays Cooper is an Emmy Award winning American journalist, author, and television personality. He currently works as the primary anchor of the CNN news show Anderson Cooper 360°. The program is normally broadcast live from a New York City studio; however, Cooper often broadcasts live on location for breaking news stories.Cooper is the younger son of the writer Wyatt Emory Cooper and the artist, designer, writer, and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt II of the prominent Vanderbilt Family of New York.
Community reviews
Journalist Anderson Cooper, scion of the (once) fabulously wealthy Vanderbilt family, was silent about his heritage for most of his life. Then, when Anderson's mother Gloria Vanderbilt reached her nineties, Cooper published the book The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss - which details his mother's fascinating history. Anderson Cooper and Gloria VanderbiltThe Vanderbilts are a larger-than-life clan that made and squandered huge fortunes over the generations. After the death of his mother, Cooper was going through her boxes of journals, documents, letters, and other memorabilia, and he 'began to hear the voices of his ancestors. ' Wanting to know more, Cooper decided to research his heritage. more
This book is stultifyingly dry and slow until around the 70% mark, when Little Gloria enters the story. Then it becomes much more interesting. I'm puzzled, though, as to why there is a whole chapter devoted to the downfall of Truman Capote, who was, you'll be astounded to learn, not a Vanderbilt. Yes, he and Gloria were friends, but she makes only minor appearances in the chapter. I have to admit I was tickled to learn that Katherine Anne Porter publicly called Truman "the pimple on the face of American literature. more
Not as Original as I Thought it Would be. I’ve heard it all before. Barely anything is original. About 20%, I would say, is what I would deem as informative. I’ve read most of the stories in this book many times before, in other books about the Vanderbilts, or about the gilded age. more
Goodness, what a disappointment this book was. "Rise and fall" is a bit of a misnomer, given that this book is literally all over the place. We know the Commodore made a bunch of money; we know his son Billy made more; and we know the rest of them squandered it on building opulent mansions which no one could afford to keep up. But is that it. Is that really the whole story. more
This is the second of Anderson Cooper’s books that I’ve listened to, the first being ’The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love and Loss’ which I still remember the pleasure of listening to a couple of Octobers ago, while driving through New England. I loved the back and forth of listening to him share his thoughts along with his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, who occasionally shared some personal history of her life, and could almost feel him squirm - but there was so much obvious love between them. It was that much more poignant as it had only been a few months since she had passed away. This shares the history of the Vanderbilt family beginning with Cornelius Vanderbilt, one of the more famous multi-millionaires of the 19th century. The son of a man who ferried cargo from Staten Island and Manhattan, eventually making a name for himself among the largest steamship operators in the 1820’s. more
As a reader of historical fiction, I’ve read a few novels involving some members of the Vanderbilt dynasty. And when I came across this nonfiction book, I decided to learn more about this famous dynasty, especially their beginnings and what caused the fall. This fascinating story stars with Jan Aertsen van der Bilt, born in 1627 in Holland (not known when he arrives in America), who as an indentured servant arrives in New Amsterdam (NYC), further the story explores the traits of some members of this dynasty including the famous Commodore, who is born two generations later, and the dynasty glamour ends with Gladys at The Breakers in Rhode Island, who isn’t officially served a notice of eviction, but in a way she is. Cornelius Vanderbilt is born on May 27, 1794 on a farmstead on Staten Island. He leaves school at the age of eleven for his first job on the water – transporting passengers and vegetables between Staten Island and Manhattan. more
A mildly interesting look at several members of the Vanderbilt family over the generations. Cooper declares his mother, Gloria, to be the last of the dynasty that was squandered. more
Really overestimated my interest in this family history. . more
America has never had a royal family but the Vanderbilts come as close to it as this country has ever known. Our fascination with them is endless. So much so that many books, non-fiction and historical fiction, have been written about their history. But for famed CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, the story is personal. This is his family and now that he is a father, Cooper felt compelled to dig deep into the history of his ancestors to write this fascinating book along with novelist and historian Katherine Howe. more
Review copy provided by Harper Audio in exchange for review. I was really excited about this one. I like Anderson Cooper and found it intriguing that his mother is a Vanderbilt. This started our stronger than it finished. I did learn many things about the family than I knew before but not as much as I wanted. more
I have been fascinated with the Vanderbilt’s ever since my parents and I went to visit the Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park, New York (we also visited Franklin D. Roosevelt’s mansion the same day). The beginning of the book was quite full of the history of the family, which I knew, but didn’t really. Starting with the Monarch, Cornelius Vanderbilt and ending with Anderson Cooper. The book is divided into two parts, “The Rise” and then “The Fall”, hence the name of the book. more
Vanderbilt: the rise and fall of an American DynastyBy Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe2021It's no surprise that Anderson Cooper knew relatively little about his Vanderbilt forebears when he decided to write his new book, "Vanderbilt, the RIse and Fall of an American Dynasty. " People like me, curators obsessed with the GIlded Age, inevitably spent more time studying the Vanderbilts and their impact on the material culture of America than Cooper would have. Indeed, I only became really interested in Anderson Cooper when I found out two things: that he was gay, and that he was Gloria Vanderbilt's son. Cooper's book is not really a history of the Vanderbilt clan. It is a highly "curated" series of a dozen vignettes that focus on specific characters and moments in the long arc of the Vanderbilt name. more
Interesting enough. Recommend skipping the entire chapter about yachting and The America’s Cup. An inordinate amount of information about Truman Capote. A lot of the information about Alva Vanderbilt can also be read in the novel A Well-behaved Woman by Therese Ann Fowler that I read a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed. . more
This is the story of the Vanderbilt family. Patriarch Cornelius Vanderbilt made two fortunes, one in shipping and the other in railroads. He was once the richest man in America. For every $20 of wealth in the country, Mr. Vanderbilt had $1. more
Cooper tells the story of the last several generations of his family - the Vanderbilts. The first half of this book is fantastic. Great history, very well written, couldn’t hardly put it down. In the second half the story gets closer to Cooper’s own life, mostly revolving around his mother, Gloria. This causes the book to lose some of the outsider’s objectivity that made the first half of the book so good. more
While I respect and adore Anderson Cooper, I found this very dry for the first 2/3rds. The tone of the book changes when he writes about his mother. more
Anderson Cooper has written a loving tribute to his mother Gloria Vanderbilt; the respect he has for his mother’s life shines through this somewhat abbreviated history of one of America’s famous Gilded Age families. Cooper grew up knowing little about the magnate, Cornelius (who left 100 million dollars to his heirs upon his death) nor the unbelievable excesses of wealth that his relatives had squandered before Anderson came onto the scene. His mother Gloria avoided conversing about her childhood, the painful custody battle when she was eleven and the scandals around the Vanderbilt history. This book became a way for Anderson Cooper to understand his mother and the influences which shaped her- and a discovery of his Vanderbilt roots. It’s almost chatty versus being a true history, somewhat like diving into celebrity news of over a hundred years ago. more
He was born shortly after George Washington began his second term as President. When he died a decade after the Civil War, he was the richest man the new nation had ever seen. His fortune of $100 million “controlled one of every twenty American dollars in circulation at that time. ” Estimates of its equivalent value today would place it upwards of $100 billion. The favored son to whom he left the bulk of his millions doubled the family’s holdings. more
I really admire Anderson Cooper and added this memoir to my list because of him and all the Vanderbilt hype. In my youth, we grew up hearing about the moneyed Vanderbilts, we toured an old house on the east coast, and of course wore Gloria’s jeans in the 1980’s. And now we can enjoy watching beautiful Gloria’s son, Anderson, deliver the news. There were interesting historical facts about deaths and homes and parties and weddings and vacations, but it was accompanied with learning of the severe harshness and waste of these nouveau riche and old money families. Extravagant wastes of money, parties, yachting, outdoing each other, etc. more
Having always been enthralled by the history of The Vanderbilt family I knew I had to read this. Wonderfully written by Anderson Cooper (son of the late Gloria Vanderbilt) this book chronicles the lives of one of the oldest and richest families to ever grace history complete with the origins of their ancestry to the magnificent splendour of their mansions and scandalous family drama. Though we will never see the likes of this kind of wealth and prominence ever the Vanderbilt name will always be synonymous with the opulence of The Gilded Age and one of the names that New York city built it's fame and history on. An absolutely engrossing read. more
A cleverly written historical autobiography I wasn’t expecting such an entertaining book, though Anderson Cooper’s smile would lead you to believe he is never boring. The chronicle of the Vanderbilts is a chronicle of America in many ways. Briskly written, carefully documented, and never tedious. Well worth reading. . more
A chronicle of one of the oldest New Money families in American history, Vanderbilt is less of a straightforward history and more of a series of anecdotes from the family's centuries-long reign in the highest ranks of the 1% - in other words, Anderson Cooper spends the better part of this book taking us through the greatest hits of his family's history. These run the gamut from interesting if dry, like the death of the patriarch Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt and the ensuing battle over his will; to the genuinely fascinating, like the contentious and complicated relationship between Alva Eskine Smith and her daughter Consuelo Vanderbilt (and honestly I would read an entire separate book about Consuelo's doomed, forced marriage to the Duke of Malborough). And then there's a chapter that does nothing except give us a blow-by-blow description of a yacht race that one of the Vanderbilts competed in, a section so baffling dull and inconsequential that I kept flipping ahead and wondering when Cooper was going to stop talking about sailing. Also there's a chapter about Truman Capote, whose only connection to the Vanderbilt's is his friendship with Anderson Cooper's mother, Gloria Vanderbilt. It's a stretch, to say the least. more
Probably the worst book I’ve read so far this year. The writing was boring, clunky, and often irrelevant. The plot (aka the life of the Vanderbilts) was often derailed by the most ridiculous things: New York when it was New Amsterdam, Truman Capote, etc. The author seemed uncomfortable with any semblance of personal revelation from the beginning, which was drilled home when he finally got to the topic of his own existence and kept it in the third person. I could have googled the Vanderbilts and learned everything in this book with less time and less annoying word structure. more
i only read this because i'm obsessed with truman capote's scandalous ass lmao . more
I have long had lots of respect for Anderson Cooper professionally and now after this book, I have even more respect for him personally. I listened to this on Audible where it was read by Anderson which made it an even better book for me. He did have a co-author, Katherine Howe, a NY Times best selling novelist, and he is quick to give her credit for her help. However, it is basically an intimate story of his family - the Vanderbilt family - beginning with Cornelius Vanderbilt in the early 1800s through to the story of his mom, Gloria Vanderbilt. It tells of Cornelius having amassed the largest fortune ever known in America up until that time as well as how the lavish lifestyles and careless, even wasteful spending caused that massive fortune to for the most part disappear over 5 generations. more
I've always been fascinated by Gilded Age excesses and have profound memories of touring the various "cottages" at Newport Beach the Vanderbilt family had. Anderson Cooper is also a remarkable fellow in his own right, so I started reading this the first day it came out. It was a quick read, breezy. Went through history focusing chapters on different family members, moving forward through chronological time, putting them in a historical context based on some struggle in gender, class, or race issues. There was nothing really wrong with it, I just didn't learn much I didn't already know. more
Journalist Anderson Cooper has written an excellent biography of his mother, Gloria’s, family, the Vanderbilts. It’s not written in a conventional style by time, but rather by individual. The book is really a series of vignettes about various family members. There are more conventional bios out there of this illustrious family and it’s many homes but Cooper puts a personal touch on it. Almost melancholy but so, so interesting. more
Nearly finished but stopped at the last few chapters. It was fine. Not organized at all and felt like it went all over the time periods. I went to the Breakers and was amazed at how lavish and beautiful the house was but wealth truly is root to so much evil and sadness if you are consumed by it. The best part of the book was the beginning as it was far more interesting interwoven with major historical events. more