Astor

Description

Astor
by Anderson Cooper

ISBN: 9780062964663
Softcover, new

Brief Description:
A NPR Best Book of the Year The number one New York Times bestselling
authors of Vanderbilt return with another riveting history of a legendary
American family, the Astors, and how they built and lavished their fortune.
The story of the Astors is a quintessentially American story–of ambition,
invention, destruction, and reinvention. From 1783, when German immigrant
John Jacob Astor first arrived in the United States, until 2009, when
Brooke Astor’s son, Anthony Marshall, was convicted of defrauding his
elderly mother, the Astor name occupied a unique place in American society.
The family fortune, first made by a beaver trapping business that grew into
an empire, was then amplified by holdings in Manhattan real estate. Over
the ensuing generations, Astors ruled Gilded Age New York society and
inserted themselves into political and cultural life, but also suffered the
most famous loss on the Titanic, one of many shocking and unexpected twists
in the family’s story. In this unconventional, page-turning historical
biography, featuring black-and-white and color photographs, #1 New York
Times bestselling authors Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe chronicle the
lives of the Astors and explore what the Astor name has come to mean in
America–offering a window onto the making of America itself.