Review of VANDERBILT
The story of an American family
I’ll admit: the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of “the Vanderbilt family” is the scene in Legally Blonde when Elle Woods sees that Warner’s older brother had recently got engaged to a Vanderbilt. I knew the name was associated with American wealth, but I couldn’t tell you the name of anyone in the family or why they were so wealthy.
Now you can add Anderson Cooper to that family tree. Yes, that Anderson Cooper (was I the only one who didn’t know he is the son of a Vanderbilt woman?). I honestly don’t know how I even came across Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe, but I did, and I listened to it (obviously Cooper has a good audio performance voice), finally learning a bit about this American family.
The Vanderbilt family story begins when New York was still New Amsterdam, with the earliest records of the Vanderbilt name in 1600s America. But the “new money” of this American dynasty didn’t begin until the mid-1800s when Cornelius Vanderbilt, also known as “The Commodore” built shipping and railroad empires.
At the peak of the family’s wealth and influence, the Vanderbilts looked much like every other extraordinary wealthy family in the gilded age, throwing lavish balls, living in extraordinary homes, and basically living in a completely parallel world in New York that the majority of people will never even come close to experiencing. The Vanderbilts were a wealthy family with typical problems.
The rise and fall of this American dynasty was short lived, really, lasting hardly a century. By the time the 1950s rolled around, Coopers mother, Gloria Vanderbilt was living off the last of the dynasty’s money. Cooper, aside from being born into an elite social class, received no inheritance of great wealth. The Vanderbilt wealth finally dying out with his mother, though the legacy of the name lives on.
The book was an interesting look into a prominent family and the gilded age of America. But honestly, I found the family quite uninteresting. The book itself is good – written and narrated well, but I have little interesting to say about what I learned. It might be more interesting to those with a more specific interest in the topic or age.
Format: Audio
Publisher: Harper
Published: September 2021
If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:
Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era by Laurence Leamer (2021) | Read my review
Black Detroit: A People's History of Self-Determination by Herb Boyd (2017) | Read my review
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