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.
