Vanderbilt - The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty - Book Review

Vanderbilt

Anderson Cooper, Katherine Howe

4 stars


 

 

You don't need to know anything about the Vanderbilts, or you could be a fan of Anderson Cooper, or merely someone who enjoys history. This book will do it all, it is filled with details of the Vanderbilts, starting with the Commodore, the wealth he created and the subsequent generations' success and losses.
You will see these people living in their incredible wealth while those around earned a pittance, throwing lavish balls, travelling to the 'continent', ignoring their children and wasting... a lot.

There is extravagance (the Vanderbilt Ball supposedly was in the quarter of a million range, while a maid earned $350 a year), gossip, tragedy and pain.

Through the eyes of Anderson Cooper (yes, I am a fan) and written with Katherine Howe, you will be taken through the strong emotions of what too much money can do to a family, the propensity to alcohol, and distance they created between their off-spring.

This is a book well worth reading if you have any interest in how the 'other half' live, but you will also witness the pitfalls of living with too much celebrity, one that can not eradicate feelings of loneliness and unworthiness. They did not live in the reality of the ordinary person. They could not understand as their wealth set them apart.

There are a lot of common names, as rich people tend to do, lots of seconds and thirds and variations of names which could be confusing. But a handy genealogy chart is included and was helpful in keeping one generation of misbehaviour separate from the next.

Referring to Gloria (Cooper's mother) this statement says it all, 'A fatherless girl can be satisfied only with the heroic, the desperate, the extreme. A fatherless girl thinks all things possible and nothing safe.' Or as Dorothy Parker once said 'Those born to the storm, find the calm very boring.'
How sad.

It is a wonder that Anderson Cooper could come from all of that.

From this life of privilege to the dystopian one found in The Every, I'm on to a new world.

What are you reading?


 

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