Vanderbilt

When Cornelius Vanderbilt died in 1877, he was the richest man in America. Two generations later, the family parlayed their wealth into social status in the city's newly defined class structure.

Anderson Cooper, CNN news anchor, and his co-author trace the city's social history, beginning with Anderson's ancestor who emigrated to the small Dutch colony at the tip of Manhattan as an indentured servant. The story ends with Anderson's mother Gloria, the last Vanderbilt to have known the family at the peak of its wealth and social clout before lavish spending took its toll.

Most affecting are Anderson’s memories of… show more.

This fascinating book gives the reader a bird’s eye view into the rise and fall of an American dynasty, the Vanderbilts, set in the grandest homes from New York, to North Carolina. The legendary icon’s great-great-great grandson, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, wrote this biography of Gloria Vanderbilt (his mother,) and their family’s amazing history, making this book both dazzling and mind-boggling as we’re given an intimate look into an unimaginable but doomed world of opulence and wealth. Cooper never whitewashes his family’s often obsessive and often ruthless drive for power and wealth, their great loves and greater losses that ultimately collapsed… show more.