Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty

Biography & Autobiography. Business. History. Nonfiction. HTML: 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… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Cariola

I've always had a fascination with the Vanderbilt family and was excited to see this book by Anderson Cooper, CNN anchor and a member of the most recent generation of Vanderbilts. I purchased the audiobook, and it did not disappoint. I finished it in two days--a testament to how engaging the story

is and to Cooper as a reader.

Cooper begins with Cornelius Vanderbilt, the family patriarch who was known as "The Commodore." He worked on his father's ferry as a boy and, with a loan from his mother, purchased his own boat when only a teenager. It was he whop made the family fortune in shipping and railroads. Cooper makes a brief digression a few chapters later to take us back to the first family member to emigrate to New York from the Netherlands. He arrived as an indentured servant in 1650. Like many immigrant families, the Vanderbilts struggled through generations until The Commodore rose to the top of American industry and commerce. Love him or hate him (and many certainly hated him), he was one heck of a self-0made man.

The Vanderbilts did not lead a charmed life. The Commodore had thirteen children but discounted his nine daughters and wrote off two of his sons in his will. One son died young, another suffered from epilepsy and was for a time confined to a mental institution, and a third was rejected as a "wastrel"--a drinker with debts. That left his son Billy and Billy's four sons to inherit most of the Vanderbilt fortune. Although they reigned at the top of New York high society for decades, the family history is riddled with multiple divorces, scandals, suicides, alcoholism, and tragedies, including one son who went down with the Lusitania. Cooper spares no details. It wasn't until near her death that his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, began to talk abut her troubled childhood and the infamous legal case in which her paternal aunt and her mother battled over her custody. Gloria was estranged from her mother until shortly before her death; she considered her nurse, nicknamed Dodo, as her mother, even fantasizing that she was her biological mother, and she never forgave her mother or her aunt for agreeing to fire Dodo. She and Anderson suffered through the early death of his father, Wyatt Cooper, from cancer and his brother Carter's suicide at the age of 23; Anderson was in the room when he jumped from the family's 14th-story apartment window.

Part of Cooper's purpose in revealing so much about his family is to let the public know that money does not always bring happiness--nor does it last. While he acknowledges that the Vanderbilt name opened doors for him along the way, by the time his father died, there was no fortune left for Gloria or for her sons to inherit. Gloria had to work hard and make her own way in the world through modeling, fashion design, and a home decor line. Sadly, she retained her Vanderbilt tastes and went through any money she earned like it was water. Cooper himself earned spare cash as a teenager by modelling and says that early on he did his best never to let people know about his Vanderbilt background.

This is a fascinating portrait of an extraordinarily successful and extraordinarily flowed family, told candidly by one of the last Vanderbilt descendants with great personal insight but empathy by one of the last Vanderbilt descendants. If you love family sagas or reading about Old New York or Hollywood society, or just have a curiosity about the lives of a renowned American family, this is one you won't want to miss.

Show Less

7 more

LibraryThing member cherybear

Good. Not as good as The Rainbow Comes and Goes. Would have liked even more photos.

LibraryThing member brianinbuffalo

I knew little about the Vanderbilts until I read Anderson Cooper’s enlightening exploration of his family’s twist- filled legacy. In many respects, it was a lively lesson in American history that shed light on numerous eras, the rise of some business icons and the pitfalls that can come with

accumulated wealth. Some of the sections went on a bit too long for my liking – including one too many extravagant balls/parties. Then again, this a biography of the Vanderbilt family. Overall, I found Cooper’s work interesting and well worth my time.

Show Less

LibraryThing member MaggieFlo

I listened to the audiobook edition, narrated by the author Anderson Cooper, Gloria Vanderbilt’s son.
It’s a mildly interesting account of the lives of several members of the family beginning with Cornelius (The Commodore) Vanderbilt and his large family of 13 children. The Commodore started

making his fortune early on by operation a small ferry from Staten Island. This expanded to steamships and railroads. How was worth $105 million when he died in 1877. Vanderbilt University in Tenessee is named after him.
Cooper highlights the most influential and peculiar members of the family and discusses the family mansions in New York and the Breakers in Rhode Island. the parties, yachts, marriages, mistresses, children, scandals, alcoholism, publicity, infighting and snobbery that infiltrated the family.
He discusses the trauma that his mother Gloria endured as a nine year old at the centre of the custody battle between her mother Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney.
Interesting story.

Show Less

LibraryThing member EllenH

Mostly interesting history of this wealthy American dynasty.

LibraryThing member mojomomma

Anderson Cooper writes about his mother's family, the Vanderbilts. Over the course of 8 generations, they came to New Amsterdam from The Netherlands, started farming and ferrying, and eventually built a huge fortune and squandered it on their lavish lifestyles. The women of the family are

especially interesting and terrifying as they attempt to marry off their daughters, build ever bigger houses and throw parties to compete with the other families in "The 400." Cooper seems to have a good understanding of his mother and how her early trauma made her the way she was. Money does not guarantee happiness.

Show Less

LibraryThing member FormerEnglishTeacher

This book surprised me. I really borrowed it because I have so much respect for Anderson Cooper. I have very little interest in the stories of rich people, including Cooper’s family, the famous Vanderbilts. I had read one of Anderson’s previous books, “The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and

Son on Life, Love, and Loss,” and on the strength of that book, I thought I would take a chance on this one. I’m glad I did. I listened to the audio version of the book, narrated beautifully by Anderson Cooper. Anderson was in the process of adopting his first son, Wyatt, while writing this book. He said that friends and acquaintances constantly asked him if he was going to give Wyatt, who was named for Anderson’s father, the middle name Vanderbilt. His response, “I never considered naming him Vanderbilt.” And when someone asked him how it felt to be a member of one of the richest, most powerful families in the history of this country, he said, “I’m a Cooper, not a Vanderbilt.” What I found extremely interesting about this book was what I learned about the life and times of the culture the Vanderbilts, the Astors, and the rest of that world they lived in. A sideline was an interesting section on Truman Capote. I learned several things about him I didn’t know, including what led to his downfall: an ill advised article he wrote for Esquire Magazine in 1975, “La Cote Basque—1965.” In that article he exposed many of the embarrassing stories behind the gossip about the rich and famous at the time. He claimed it was “thinly disguised,” but it was anything but that, and everyone mentioned in the piece as well as those who were friends and family of those people, cut Capote off. His masterpiece, “In Cold Blood” put him on the map and made him the center of the A list on both coasts. “La Cote Basque” knocked him off…permanently. Cooper wrote this book with novelist Katherine Howe, and I’m not sure how much Anderson actually wrote. The writing is masterfully written whoever wrote it. I highly recommend “The Vanderbilts: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty.”

Show Less

LibraryThing member BookConcierge

Book on CD read by Anderson Cooper
3.5***

Subtitle: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty

Cooper, the son of “the last Vanderbilt” (Gloria Vanderbilt), and a trained journalist, looks at the family legacy in this work of nonfiction.

There have been many books written about this uber wealthy

family of the gilded age. Usually, the books have focused on one or two of the generations from Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt to his children and grandchildren. Cooper tries to encapsulate the history of his family in its entirety.

Unfortunately, there is so much information about the family that we get only glimpses of some of the more colorful members. His focus seems to be on how the Commodore accumulated so much wealth (and why doing so was so all-encompassing for him), and how his descendants managed to squander it all away.

Dysfunctional family with a capital ‘D’! The rich ARE different. He spends some time countering the book (and TV miniseries) made about his mother, Little Gloria, Happy At Last, relating the “true story” behind some of the dramatized scenes.

On the whole, it held my attention, and I learned a few tidbits I hadn’t previously come across.

The text comes with many photos. The ones printed in the center of the book all have captions, but the photos on the front and back cover, and on the front and back endpapers have no captions, so the reader is left to puzzle out who these people might be.

Cooper does a fine job of reading the book. He is, after all, invested in the story.

Show Less

Fewer