John Jacob Astor: America's First Multimillionaire - Hardcover

Madsen, Axel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471385034 ISBN 13: 9780471385035

Publisher: Wiley, 2001

Synopsis

On The Deal Maker: How William C. Durant Made General Motors:
"A well-written biography."-New York Times

On Stanwyck: The Life and Times of Barbara Stanwyck:
"Madsen's admirably researched, insightful portrait of her aloof nature . . . reveals she was always torn between her wish to give of herself and her need to be in control."-Christian Science Monitor

On Chanel: A Woman of Her Own:
"Fascinating . . . . Takes the reader behind the coromandel veneers of Chanel's life."-New York Times Book Review
"Carefully knits together the complex pattern of Chanel's complicated existence. It's not an easy task."-Toronto Globe and Mail

On Gloria and Joe:
"Axel Madsen finally gives the public a fascinating chronicle of the romance that could have ruined more than two careers."-Dallas Morning News

On Cousteau:
"Both critical and understanding. And it is exceptionally readable. Readers are well advised to take the plunge."-Chicago Tribune

On Malraux:
"Will stand as the best of more than a dozen books about Malraux in print."-Kansas City Star

About this title

About the Author

AXEL MADSEN has written fifteen biographies, including Chanel: A Woman of Her Own, Gloria and Joe: The Star-Crossed Love Affair of Gloria Swanson and Joe Kennedy, and The Deal Maker: How William C. Durant Made General Motors (Wiley). He lives in Los Angeles.

From the Back Cover

On The Deal Maker: How William C. Durant Made General Motors:
"A well-written biography." New York Times

On Stanwyck: The Life and Times of Barbara Stanwyck:
"Madsen s admirably researched, insightful portrait of her aloof nature . . . reveals she was always torn between her wish to give of herself and her need to be in control." Christian Science Monitor

On Chanel: A Woman of Her Own:
"Fascinating . . . . Takes the reader behind the coromandel veneers of Chanel s life." New York Times Book Review
"Carefully knits together the complex pattern of Chanel s complicated existence. It s not an easy task." Toronto Globe and Mail

On Gloria and Joe:
"Axel Madsen finally gives the public a fascinating chronicle of the romance that could have ruined more than two careers." Dallas Morning News

On Cousteau:
"Both critical and understanding. And it is exceptionally readable. Readers are well advised to take the plunge." Chicago Tribune

On Malraux:
"Will stand as the best of more than a dozen books about Malraux in print." Kansas City Star

From the Inside Flap

"All he touched turned to gold, and it seemed as if fortune delighted in erecting him a monument of her unerring potency." Philip Hone, the last aristocratic mayor of New York

When he died a few months short of his eighty-fifth birthday, John Jacob Astor was the richest man in the United States. The fortune he left behind represented an astounding one-fifteenth of all personal wealth in America. Now, in this revelatory biography, bestselling author Axel Madsen deftly examines the private life of the first multinational entrepreneur of the New World.

Ruthless, tightfisted, but with an amazing gift for organizing business, Astor built an empire that spanned the commercial world of his time. From the end of the American Revolution to the mid-nineteenth century, Astor exhibited his flair for business and left a lasting impact on an emerging America. Astute and audacious, he became one of the first merchants to imagine the world as a global economy. And he had an uncanny knack for bolting out of businesses just before they went bust. He liquidated his China clippers just as tea from India and Japan cut into the tea trade; he dropped his fur interest just as fashion shifted and beavers and other furs became too scarce to be used in the emerging ready-made clothing industry. He then successfully converted his profits into Manhattan real estate.

Astor was a slumlord, a war profiteer, and a merciless jobber who shipped opium to China and sold liquor to Indians. He tricked President Thomas Jefferson into making an exception on the trade embargo against Britain and France for him and profited handsomely when James Madison blundered into the War of 1812.

John Jacob Astor tells the fascinating tale of this German-born son of a butcher who made his fortune in a new world where his money influenced public policy and led him to socialize with presidents and kings. This intriguing book features some of the most fascinating figures in the early history of the United States, including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Aaron Burr, and Washington Irving.

A thrilling account of this legendary figure and the harrowing cross-country expedition he financed in order to rule the rich western fur trade, John Jacob Astor weaves the story of the beginning of big business in America with Astor s life and, ultimately, reveals a man whose desire to reinvent himself reshaped the modern world.

Reviews

Expertly situating his subject's accomplishments in the context of late 18th- and early 19th-century commercial and geopolitical expansion, Madsen (Chanel; Gloria and Joe) weighs in with an absorbing biography of one of 19th-century America's most powerful men. Having immigrated to the U.S. from Germany in 1783, Astor was on friendly terms with such prominent figures as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Albert Gallatin by the time he came to dominate the North American fur trade in 1800. While Astor's relationships with Jefferson and others characterized the wheeling and dealing in fledgling Washington, D.C., his mastery over the fur trade figured significantly in opening up the American West. The book's best moments come when Madsen describes Astor's efforts to establish a permanent outpost in the Oregon territory. Called Astor, it was designed not only to aid its founder's domination of the fur trade in the Northwest, but to help him facilitate trade with China--for while fur brought Astor his first fortune, foreign trade provided him with his second. While he had a talent for exploiting new business opportunities, Astor also had the foresight to extricate himself from both the fur and trading businesses before they waned. Astor's third fortune, the legacy he would pass on to his heirs, sprang from his real estate investments in Manhattan. He sank the profits from his first ventures into large swaths of land in rapidly expanding New York City, where he built mansions and tenements alike. Madsen provides a largely sympathetic portrait of Astor; while no revelations emerge, the book effectively projects his story against the backdrop of seminal events in early American history. 21 illus. and 2 maps.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

For much of our nation's history, the name Astor has been synonymous with great wealth. Madsen (Chanel, Gloria and Joe) now adds his account of the life and times of the nation's first multimillionaire. Astor was born in Germany in 1763 and came to the New World at age 20 with a shipment of musical instruments as his stake. By the time he died in 1848, he had made separate fortunes in the fur trade, the China trade, and New York real estate, with a few bucks from opium trading thrown in. But his really big money came from land, which he purchased in large tracts in and around the burgeoning city of New York and leased out on long contracts. By the late 1880s, his descendants were collecting $9 million per year in rent from the city alone! This work is based on such published sources as Kenneth W. Porter's John Jacob Astor, Businessman (1931) and John Upton Terrell's Furs by Astor (1963) but does have both footnotes and a list of sources. Unfortunately, there are many awkwardly constructed sentences and geographic errors; otherwise, this would have been an acceptable public library purchase. Patrick J. Brunet, Western Wisconsin Technical Coll., La Crosse
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0471385034
• ISBN 13: 9780471385035
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320