... splendid ... The book closes by taking the reader on a ghost tour of vanished Vanderbilt properties in Manhattan. It is so haunting and beautifully written that I found myself reading it over and over ... This is a terrific book, rich (yes, pun intended) in social history, ingeniously organized and overall well-written ... At times, the prose can get a bit overheated...But this is a quibble, weighed against the book’s abundant virtues, which, despite the occasional whoosh-chop! of the guillotine blade, reveal a warm heart and a flavor of well-earned catharsis.
With resplendent detail, the authors capture the gasp-eliciting extravagance of the Vanderbilt Gilded Age mansions and lifestyles, which rarely made them happy ... With its intrinsic empathy and in-depth profiles of women, this is a distinctly intimate, insightful, and engrossing chronicle of an archetypal, self-consuming American dynasty ... Cooper’s magnetism, Howe’s fan base, and an irresistible subject add up to a nonfiction blockbuster.
[An] engaging and, indeed, suspenseful study of Cooper’s gilded relations ... Cooper and Howe string together these diverting portraits on a luminous thread, 'the loaded promises of the American dream' ... The book, however, will undoubtedly be read not as a cautionary tale but, like The Great Gatsby, as a how-to manual, as our discontented citizenry hysterically chases a golden calf that continually eludes it.
Cooper turns up some family secrets, especially their connections to the Confederacy (which explains why there’s a Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee), and he explodes the long-held notion that Cornelius Vanderbilt was a wholly self-made man (he borrowed money from his mother to buy his first boat). Suicides, affairs, bad business deals, fierce rivalries, and occasionally an outburst of good sense (as when Billy Vanderbilt doubled his inheritance in just eight years, amassing $230 million) mark these pages along with moments of tragedy, such as the loss of one ancestor in the sinking of the Lusitania. A sturdy family history that also serves as a pointed lesson in how to lose a fortune.
...juicy ... In the book’s most moving section, Cooper recounts his mother Gloria’s traumatic childhood, which involved a 'sort-of-kidnapping' and a drawn-out custody battle, and her out-of-control spending and dysfunctional relationships as an adult. Marked by meticulous research and deep emotional insight, this is a memorable chronicle of American royalty.
