2024 the best biographies review

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New York Times best-selling author and journalist Anderson Cooper teams with New York Times best-selling historian and novelist Katherine Howe to chronicle the rise and fall of a legendary American dynasty - his mother’s family, the Vanderbilts.

When 11-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt began to work on his father’s small boat ferrying supplies in New York Harbor at the beginning of the 19th century, no one could have imagined that one day he would, through ruthlessness, cunning, and a pathological desire for money, build two empires - one in shipping and another in railroads - that would make him the richest man in America. His staggering fortune was fought over by his heirs after his death in 1877, sowing familial discord that would never fully heal. Though his son Billy doubled the money left by “the Commodore”, subsequent generations competed to find new and ever more extraordinary ways of spending it. By 2018, when the last Vanderbilt was forced out of The Breakers - the 70-room summer estate in Newport, Rhode Island, that Cornelius’ grandson and namesake had built - the family would have been unrecognizable to the tycoon who started it all.

Now, the Commodore’s great-great-great-grandson, Anderson Cooper, joins with historian Katherine Howe to explore the story of his legendary family and their outsized influence. Cooper and Howe breathe life into the ancestors who built the family’s empire, basked in the Commodore’s wealth, hosted lavish galas, and became synonymous with unfettered American capitalism and high society. Moving from the hardscrabble wharves of old Manhattan to the lavish drawing rooms of Gilded Age Fifth Avenue, from the ornate summer palaces of Newport to the courts of Europe, and all the way to modern-day New York, Cooper and Howe wryly recount the triumphs and tragedies of an American dynasty unlike any other.

Written with a unique insider’s viewpoint, this is a rollicking, quintessentially American history as remarkable as the family it so vividly captures.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

Reviewer: Evelyn Boada
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Fascinating read.
Review: A fascinating look at another time in our history and a way of life we may have thought we enviedVery well written and an easy read.

Reviewer: CookinMaine
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Interesting book
Review: I like books that are biographies and historical too, and I would have given it a five but it felt like it was going off track too many times in the end. You go from a heavy historical book to other stories that seem to go off in different tangents. Anyway, it was good.

Reviewer: E. Piper
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: FASCINATING
Review: I really enjoyed this book and learned a lot about the Vanderbilt family. I found their history fascinating and was appalled at how they squandered such an immense fortune. It was a well-written, factual narrative that I highly recommend.

Reviewer: DJ
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Not bad; not quite what I was hoping for
Review: I bought and listened to the Audible version all the way through. Before I listened, I knew basically nothing about the Vanderbilts, aside from they were an old wealthy family and that Gloria sold jeans (though I actually had not made the connection between the old family and Gloria until the book).Pros:- Cooper is, not surprisingly, a great narrator. Clear and polished without being affected.- The book delivered to some extent on its title, describing the rise and fall of the dynasty, though emphasizing the fall.- Certainly I know more about the Vanderbilts than I did before the book and have some sense of their place in history.Cons:- The book did not pay nearly enough attention to how the money was made. Basically, we hear a lot about how Commodore Cornelius got his start, which was great, but not how he built an empire. How people make money is important. Was it hard work and smart decisions? What were those decisions? Management style? How did the transition into railroads work? Who were other important people in the businesses? Was he a straight shooter or slimy? Is there a "great crime" behind the great fortune? And then, we get to BIlly, his primary heir, who in eight years *doubled* what was already the country's largest fortune, but *nothing* about how he made that happen (or whether he lucked into it). From there we hear little about the Vanderbilt involvement with the railroad, even though they seemed to be at least a little involved.Basically, if you're going to present the rise and fall of a dynasty, spend at least as much time talking about how it was created (the hard part) as you do about how it was dissipated.- The book involves a lot of time travel, with flashbacks, forward, sideways. It does this at both a chapter level and within the chapters. It was incredibly hard to follow at times, especially since I had not heard of any of these people before. This, along with sometimes not naming the people being talked about until well into a story, was completely unhelpful. The stories themselves are frequently dramatic, and they don't need these devices to make them so.- Way too much detail about flowers at parties, attire, and home furnishings. It worked for Edith Wharton but not so well here.- Way too many details that are speculative. "He would have felt the ..." It seemed like there was an attempt at literary fiction here - it didn't succeed for me.- Why was there an entire chapter about Truman Capote? I get that he and Gloria were friends, but that doesn't seem to me to justify an entire chapter, or if it does, the chapter should be mostly about their relationship, and not a mini-biography of his rise and fall.

Reviewer: R. Sloan
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Book
Review: Wonderful read!

Reviewer: Doug
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Good Story
Review: When discussing a family history, there will always be parts uninteresting to those outside the family, this books has those. However, interesting the vast wealth diminished by so many who were clueless.Still worth the read.

Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Good read
Review: Love this history. Love Anderson Cooper……

Reviewer: Sandy
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: absolutely amazing!
Review: This book was so interesting I couldn’t put it down. So much history. The Vanderbilt family will always go down in history. They were rich and sometimes poor but they did it their way. They lived a life of excitement, sometimes happy, sometimes sad. But they built their Dynasty. I would’ve loved to had met them.Highly recommend this book.

Reviewer: Pedro C
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I strongly recommend Anderson Cooper's version of the Vanderbilts. Not only because of the great research work but for the point of view from which he visions his ancestors and their individual contribution to both America's and the world's social and trending evolution.

Reviewer: bill mullen, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I originally bought this book for myself and then purchased a second one as a gift. Beautiful book that is so comfortable to read, its so well written its as though you’re sitting there listening to a persons family stories. Honest and open about the era, how people lived and were perceived by onlookers. Wonderful book that I would recommend as a very good read!

Reviewer: Laurence Lautman
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: to be honest i was a little dissapointed.

Reviewer: Manuel
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Interesting reading recommended to everybody

Reviewer: the1andonly
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This writing team have produced the best, most interesting and most human of the books that I have read about the super-rich American families of the 19th century. Mr Cooper's family insight is invaluable. A must for anyone interested in this period.