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

Vanderbilt, Arthur

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747406200 ISBN 13: 9780747406204

Publisher: Sphere Books Limited, 1991

Synopsis

Cornelius Vanderbilt - "The Commodore" - was born in 1794. At the age 16 he borrowed $100 from his mother to buy a boat and began a ferry service to Manhattan. By the time of his death in 1877 he had built a far-flung steamship and railroad empire and accumulated an estate worth over $100 million. The bulk of his money went to his son, William, who duly mimicked his father's business strategies and doubled the fortune. William's son Willie married the restless Alva Smith, who constructed a string of multimillion dollar mansions and threw a $250,000 costume ball that got the Vanderbilts into New York society. Willie's brother Cornelius married unhappily and thereafter most of the family bought and grew tired of extravagant yachts, Rolls-Royces and racehorses, and blithely partied away their vast fortune. This is the story of a dynasty which fought, feuded, bought and bulldozed its way to the height of the "gilded age", and then vanished with it.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Vanderbilt: the very name signifies wealth. The family patriarch, "the Commodore," built up a fortune that made him the world's richest man by 1877. Yet, less than fifty years after the Commodore's death, one of his direct descendants died penniless, and no Vanderbilt was counted among the world's richest people. Fortune's Children tells the dramatic story of all the amazingly colorful spenders who dissipated such a vast inheritance.

About the Author:

Arthur T. Vanderbilt II is the author of many books, among them Changing Law, a biography of his grandfather Arthur T. Vanderbilt, which won the American Bar Association's Scribes Award. He practices law in New Jersey.

About this edition

• Publisher: Sphere Books Limited
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0747406200
• ISBN 13: 9780747406204
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496