Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune
A NPR Best Book of the Year

The number one New York Times bestselling authors of Vanderbilt return with another riveting history of a legendary American family, the Astors, and how they built and lavished their fortune.

The story of the Astors is a quintessentially American story—of ambition, invention, destruction, and reinvention.

From 1783, when German immigrant John Jacob Astor first arrived in the United States, until 2009, when Brooke Astor’s son, Anthony Marshall, was convicted of defrauding his elderly mother, the Astor name occupied a unique place in American society.

The family fortune, first made by a beaver trapping business that grew into an empire, was then amplified by holdings in Manhattan real estate. Over the ensuing generations, Astors ruled Gilded Age New York society and inserted themselves into political and cultural life, but also suffered the most famous loss on the Titanic, one of many shocking and unexpected twists in the family’s story.

In this unconventional, page-turning historical biography, featuring black-and-white and color photographs, #1 New York Times bestselling authors Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe chronicle the lives of the Astors and explore what the Astor name has come to mean in America—offering a window onto the making of America itself.

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Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune
A NPR Best Book of the Year

The number one New York Times bestselling authors of Vanderbilt return with another riveting history of a legendary American family, the Astors, and how they built and lavished their fortune.

The story of the Astors is a quintessentially American story—of ambition, invention, destruction, and reinvention.

From 1783, when German immigrant John Jacob Astor first arrived in the United States, until 2009, when Brooke Astor’s son, Anthony Marshall, was convicted of defrauding his elderly mother, the Astor name occupied a unique place in American society.

The family fortune, first made by a beaver trapping business that grew into an empire, was then amplified by holdings in Manhattan real estate. Over the ensuing generations, Astors ruled Gilded Age New York society and inserted themselves into political and cultural life, but also suffered the most famous loss on the Titanic, one of many shocking and unexpected twists in the family’s story.

In this unconventional, page-turning historical biography, featuring black-and-white and color photographs, #1 New York Times bestselling authors Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe chronicle the lives of the Astors and explore what the Astor name has come to mean in America—offering a window onto the making of America itself.

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Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune

Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune

Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune

Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune

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Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Paralleling the wealth divide of the Gilded Age with that of the modern day, Anderson Cooper is back with another historical biography fresh on the heels of his best-selling Vanderbilt. Another immensely influential and dizzyingly wealthy American family is under the miscroscope--the Astors.

A NPR Best Book of the Year

The number one New York Times bestselling authors of Vanderbilt return with another riveting history of a legendary American family, the Astors, and how they built and lavished their fortune.

The story of the Astors is a quintessentially American story—of ambition, invention, destruction, and reinvention.

From 1783, when German immigrant John Jacob Astor first arrived in the United States, until 2009, when Brooke Astor’s son, Anthony Marshall, was convicted of defrauding his elderly mother, the Astor name occupied a unique place in American society.

The family fortune, first made by a beaver trapping business that grew into an empire, was then amplified by holdings in Manhattan real estate. Over the ensuing generations, Astors ruled Gilded Age New York society and inserted themselves into political and cultural life, but also suffered the most famous loss on the Titanic, one of many shocking and unexpected twists in the family’s story.

In this unconventional, page-turning historical biography, featuring black-and-white and color photographs, #1 New York Times bestselling authors Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe chronicle the lives of the Astors and explore what the Astor name has come to mean in America—offering a window onto the making of America itself.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780062964700
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 09/19/2023
Pages: 336
Sales rank: 10,878
Product dimensions: 6.30(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

About The Author
Anderson Cooper is an anchor at CNN and a correspondent for CBS’s 60 Minutes. He has won twenty Emmys and numerous other major journalism awards. Cooper is the author of the New York Times bestseller Astor (with Katherine Howe) and three number one New York Times bestsellers: The Rainbow Comes and Goes, Dispatches from the Edge, and Vanderbilt (with Katherine Howe). He lives in New York with his two sons.


Katherine Howe is a novelist and a historian of America. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, The House of Velvet and Glass, and (with Anderson Cooper)Vanderbilt and Astor; the young adult novels Conversion and The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen; and she was the editor of The Penguin Book of Witches. She lives with her family in New England.

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