Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt

By Arthur T. Vanderbilt II

Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, History

Arthur T. Vanderbilt II traces the Vanderbilt fortune from the Commodore, Cornelius Vanderbilt, who began with a single ferry and built a steamboat and railroad empire, to the heirs who spent it in the Gilded Age. Chapters follow Alva Vanderbilt and her daughter Consuelo, the Newport cottages Marble House and The Breakers, George Washington Vanderbilt's Biltmore and the playboy Reginald Vanderbilt. Within fifty years of the Commodore's death in 1877, no Vanderbilt remained among the world's richest people.

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• Ryan Holiday: “Guiltily, I had not read it yet but quickly remedied this fact–good thing because he is right. ... This book is largely a cautionary tale on what a love of money does to a family.”