The first tycoon : the epic life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

The thing that most impressed me about this work is the amount of research that Stiles obviously put into this book. Stiles takes the position that Vanderbilt has been judged a little harshly by previous economic historians of the Gilded Age. I'll admit that I don't enough to judge the efficacy of

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his argument, but I appreciate the effort that obviously went into the work. On a more practical level, it's well-written and quite approachable to all audiences interested in American history.

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Yes, but how did he make his decisions?
T. J. Stiles thinks Cornelius Vanderbilt has gotten a bad rap.
Born during George Washington's presidency, Vanderbilt built a massive business empire starting with steamships and then railroads. His life spanned an epic period of the growth of the United

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States. During his life he saw New York grow from a population of 40,000 to over 1 million, the introduction of the railroad and steamships, building the Erie canal, the gold rush, the telegraph, and the American civil war.
Vanderbilt comes across as tenaciously driven in business, opportunistic, and personally aloof. During the development of the country during the 18th century, Vanderbilt was always there -capitalizing upon and in turn, providing the infrastructure that enabled the country's growth.
Vanderbilt's response to the California gold rush of 1849 is illustrative. He built a steamship line that transported passengers to the east coast of Nicaragua, transferred them to a small riverboat for the trip up the San Juan river. Shipped and reassembled a larger ferry boat for the trip across Lake Nicaragua, and then used pack animals to make the 12 miles trip to the Pacific. Finally, another steamship took them to San Francisco. Doing so required political deftness, engineering expertise, financial backing, and a keen business acumen.
Vanderbilt then began shifting his business from steamships to railroads. Shortly after the civil war he had essentially shifted his entire business focus away from steamships to railroads.
I wondered how he made these decisions. Did he ponder long and hard the future of the country and decide where he needed to be? How did he see these changes coming? Another strength of Vanderbilt's business practices was his ruthless efficiency enabling him to cut costs and operate profitably when others couldn't. How did he achieve these efficiencies? Was he an early version of Sam Walton? Unfortunately, the author can't help us much here.
Vanderbilt, with his embracing of unfettered competition, crushing of workers (at one point he fired all his enginehands on his personal yacht and hired an entire new set on the eve of the underway), and manipulation of markets to gain control and wealth seems an unlikely hero for the current environment. You would think he'd be reviled even more. He had an aversion to government handouts because many of his competitors benefitted unfairly from special treatment. That has made the success of the book more remarkable in my mind.
In the end, Vanderbilt saw the Panic of 1873, the most severe financial meltdown of his career, as caused by an asset bubble in Railroad stocks. It would be interesting to know what he would think of today's situation.

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This is a well-written and well-researched book but I found it tedius to read tll the latter part of the book. Vanderbilt supposedly had about three months of school, and certainly left school at age 11. Yet he became the richest ma in the USA. The account of his life as a shipping magnate I

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thought not of much interest but his time as a raildroad tycoom was of greater interest. The book shows him in a good light--certainly a contrast from what some have portrayed him as.

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Excellent book. Filled with details. Chronicles an interesting time in our nation's history. - Greg

The author needs an honorary PhD for the attention to detail throughout this entire book. The definitive biography of Vanderbilt. It even has specific stock transactions including the amount paid, etc.

This book starts off well with the very interesting details of Vanderbilt's early life on the waters around New York and his transition from a minor entrepreneur to a major player in the development of shipping lines around the world as well as ferries and railroads in the northeast. However, the

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last third of the book, covering his activities as a major trader and manipulator of railroads, gets somewhat dull as quite a lot of it deals with stock trading, corporates shenanigans and backroom deals. Overall a pretty good however and worth the time if you are interested in nineteen century America.

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Just fantastic... A well balanced of the Vanderbilt life, the social and especially financial transformation happening in that particular time area. Starting with Cornelius humble beginnings, M. Stiles takes us from the New York debut all the way thru Vanderbilt's life until his grand finale: Grand

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Central Station. Only minor point is that at some point, Stiles goes a little too deep into the financial explanations of certain events. Other than that, a very entertaining read. It gives us a full view of this complex character that was Vanderbilt; from his way of dealing with his children to his relation with his wife and mistresses and especially his business enemies.
Overall would recommend it for any biography readers.

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There were the rich, the super rich, and Cornelius Vanderbilt. T.J. Stiles takes you through the life of the Commodore in The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Sons are notoriously prone to exaggerate the importance of their fathers, as are biographers with their

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subjects...

Vanderbilt founded a dynasty. The First Tycoon starts with one of the final challenges to that dynasty. The Commodore had left the vast majority of his estate to one of his children. The rest were challenging his will. He wanted his business empire to continue through his children, without it being severed and control lost.

Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt was born in relatively humble family on Staten Island during George Washington’s presidency. He started in his father's footsteps as a boatman. He latched onto the power of steam and assembled a huge fleet of steamships. After conquering the water, he assembled a railroad empire. We see Vanderbilt's role in transportation revolutions, battling the physical growth of the nation with better and faster means of transportation. Along the way he helped shape the growth of the modern corporation

T. J. Stiles argues that Vanderbilt did more than perhaps any other individual to create the current economic world. His steamships and railroad lines took vast amounts of capital, requiring more than one individual to fund the growth and expansion.

Compliance professionals and securities law aficionados may be fascinated by the growth of the corporate entity. At the time they offered less liability protection than we would expect today.

The history of Vanderbilt is also full of stock manipulation and anti-trust issues. Transportation companies routinely gathered together to set rates and limit competition. When competition did break out, it was a vicious battle between the rivals. Sometimes the battle was waged in the stock market with the players trying to corner securities and punish the wealth of their rivals.

The book does a remarkable job of balancing the epics tales with a fast-moving narrative.

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Alexander Hamilton, America’s first Treasury Secretary, is often credited with forming the nation’s new economic system. Not far behind him (or even beside him) sits Cornelius Vanderbilt. In modern times, his name is most associated with a university in Nashville, but his legacy touched many

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turning points of nineteenth-century America. In this biography, Stiles describes Vanderbilt’s story beginning with the waning years of the eighteenth century and continuing after the Civil War until railroads united the country.

A full examination of Vanderbilt’s life is beyond the scope of this essay because, well, there’s so much to his life. Stiles does an excellent job condensing the story into less than 1,000 pages. Everything from the formation of the corporation to the reach of steamboats and railroads, from inter-state commerce to the economic union of the American east and west, from the defeat of the Confederate rebellion to attempts to reunify the country – all these things were touched upon by this great man. He was the first of the big men in an era of big (and rich) men.

Stiles details each of these stories and sketches the personality of a difficult man. From his early years as a steamboat captain to later years as an economic giant, the portrait that emerges is one of financial acumen, strategic clarity, and determination. Stiles inspects the economic forces carefully – much more carefully than I am capable of – and shows how the American system of life was founded outside of government. His work in business helped unify the country’s economy, perhaps more than anyone else.

I read this book because I work at a medical center that bears the Vanderbilt name. Having gathered outlines of his life from prior history classes, I wanted to learn more about the life of this giant. Given his relative lack of formal education, his continual social and financial ascent is quite impressive. We can only hope that the huge gap between rich and poor in the Gilded Age never repeats itself, but a giant of business and transportation such as Vanderbilt should be appreciated even in our era of fiber-optic cables and the microchip.

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