Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune

A well written look at the Astor family. good history, and quite a view into their world. I learned a great deal! well worth reading!

As they did in their earlier book on the Vanderbilts, Cooper and Howe have selected key family members and key events in their lives to tell the story of the Astors. The result is an entertaining and well researched (they even have footnotes this time) overview of the family that, quite literally, once owned much of New York City. The stories of the various family members are fascinating, and the authors add in quite a bit of sociological context that makes the book deeper and more relevant than a simple catalog of wealthy people and their foibles (though there is a lot of that as well). If you’re interested in the Astors, the Gilded Age, America’s class system or just like to read about rich people, you’ll enjoy this book.

I just finished reading Astor and absolutely loved it. The structure of the book, with details no one would ever guess about this famous family and their legacy, is captivating. So well researched, I was enthralled. The original John Jacob Astor was actually a horrible man, slaughtering beavers and other animals on his way across the continent after arriving penniless on our shores from Walldorf, Germany. His greed knew no end. While living extravagantly in a posh NYC neighborhood and buying up New York real estate, the tenements in which poor immigrants lived were on land owned by him. Rent was impossibly high and suffering was rampant. But the Astors cared little. Subsequent generations of Astors were eccentric, strange and very greedy. Too much money harbors great resentment on future generations. I have actually seen the effects in people I have known.

I am a fan of Anderson Cooper and his writing, and I have enjoyed everything else he has written. I have read many books on The Astor Family, and various members of it, and was really looking forward to this book. Maybe I just had too high expectations from Cooper's previous books. First I feel that Cooper is holding a personal vendetta against the Astor family. He makes it quite clear when discussing Brooke Astor's (apparent) snubbing of him when he was not with his mother at Mortimer's. As a seasoned journalist I would think Cooper wouldn't be so biased, but its all over the book. Clearly in Cooper's eyes the Vanderbilts were better than the Astors. I am sure (and I hope) that IRL Cooper doesn't still hold this apparent grudge against a family, but by reading the book you would think we were back in The Gilded Age and Anderson was not invited to Mrs. Astor's balls. My larger issue is that a book that for me should have been like reading my favorite type of candy this book was very dull at points. There are countless pages about things that I feel could have been explained in one or two pages (such as the massacre at the Astor House). I was shocked to find some parts of this book tedious for me to get through. If you don't know much about the Astor Family this does give you a full picture of the family origins and how they got where they got to, but I'd probably recommend something a little less biased. I am not sorry I got this book. It's a great package, and the authors are quite talented. It just wasn't what I was expecting. Still will buy future books by Cooper in the hopes they keep me as interested as his prior works.

!I read this for book club. I really enjoyed it. I had little knowledge about the Astor's. I ended up doing even more research about different periods of time in America. I am going to go to The Tenement Museum in the lower east side to understand the conditions,of the poor in New York City. This was a good read

While I have read a lot of books about wealth history in the US, the Astor family was a story I knew very little about. Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe have written a book that is a worthy companion to their book about the Vanderbilt family (of which Cooper is a descendant). They were one of the wealthiest families in the country for over 200 years, but they were also one that we know less about than the more opulent Vanderbilt family. Their wealth, though just as substantial was older and more subdued, which explains why they are more historically obscure. I thought Astor was more skillfully written than Cooper and Howe’s Vanderbilt book. But I did feel that there were three chapters toward the end that weren’t really about the family, and I wasn’t convinced they belonged in this book. Despite that distraction, I still enjoyed this book.

The entire story is set before us - the good, the bad and the ugly. It’s a fascinating, yet often brutal tale of rags to riches to rags again. In the style of famous biographies like those of Thomas Edison or Benjamin Franklin, little is left to the imagination. Even the smallest details are shared in an attempt to get a closer look at the rich and famous that helped build New York City.

Such an interesting history of this weathly family. No stone unturned, a well written page turner. I loved it. I wanted to learn even more about each character after reading.

I thoroughly enjoyed this read. Was factual with personal experiences intertwined throughout. It provides the reader with a window to see inside one of the wealthiest times of America history and the impact on society.

Very informative book

Eu comecei a assistir a série The Gilded Age, traduzida como A Idade dourada na Max, e como gosto do autor achei bastante interessante estender as informações . A série enfeita a realidade e ele esclarece a verdade. Gosto de História, em qualquer época, e dos costumes.

Great writing and interesting topic

I already know all about the Astors so this book held nothing new for me apart from a few quotes from valuable primary sources like Town Topics. That said however it is still an engaging, if haphazard, read. My greatest issue with it however is the glaring historical inaccuracies. The greatest example is that of John Jacob Astor IV, the most famous Astor of them all, the great man who lost his life on the Titanic. Due to this association, much as been written about him and his death, all which can be found through a simple glance at Encyclopaedia Titanica. Thus I was shocked at the inaccuracies in this book regarding his final days. The Astors did NOT board Titanic at Southampton. They boarded in Cherbourg, France. But most irritating of all is the blind repetition of the ‘falling funnel’ myth that was debunked years ago. JOHN JACOB ASTOR IV WAS NOT KILLED BY A FALLING FUNNEL. There was no ‘blunt force trauma.’ His body was not crushed and sooty beyond recognition. In fact his body was almost perfectly preserved – ‘The features were unharmed, the face being only slightly discolored by water.’ (Buffalo Morning Express, 1 May 1912) I probably sound pedantic but I’m sorry blatant inaccuracies like this are unacceptable, especially when the subject has been written on extensively. (Disappointed in the front cover too. Ava Willing is not deserving of it.) Overall, worth a look at but know that there are far better biographies of the Astor family out there – Derek Wilson’s The Astors and John D. Gates’ The Astor Family are two that come to mind.