As of the time that this post is publishing, we will be in the midst of the second season of The Gilded Age. While most of the characters in the show are fictional, there are some who were historical figures in New York at that time. And Caroline Schermerhorn Astor is one of those historical figures. Astor is a name that we still hear from time to time (on both sides of the Atlantic) but the story behind the name has started to fade. Astor by Anderson Cooper explores the complicated history of an American family, and it is a must-read for Gilded Age fans!
Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune, Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe
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.
Why You Should Read This…
I will admit, I was not sure with this book. I requested the audiobook from the library on a whim, and the first 20-30 minutes felt a tad disconnected for me. (It opens with Anderson Cooper talking about his interactions with members of the Astor family in his youth, and I’m more of a “straight into the history” person.) However, once I got into it, I could not stop listening.
Astor moves at a fairly brisk pace, and tackles each generation of the American Astors and how they contributed to the family’s fortune and growth, or how they depleted it. Cooper and Howe give us a good introduction to each family member without giving a full-length biography and the book is a success for it. (I know many of the Astors have their own independent biographies but not all of us want that.)
One of the most fascinating chapters for me focused on one of the distant Astor cousins who got roped into the limelight because of his name. It brought a depth to the book that I was not expecting, and was just as interesting to me as the Gilded Age Astors dominating the 400.
My one slight qualm is that I thought Cooper and Howe devoted slightly too much time to the Titanic and the various cinematic retellings (due to John Jacob Astor IV dying when it sank). However, most people are more interested in the Titanic than I am, and I still loved the book in spite of it!
Is Astor by Anderson Cooper on your to-read list?
Cheers,
The Historian
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