Friday, March 22, 2024, 3:30 PM.

Every month, residents of Central Baptist Village meet to discuss a book chosen by our Outreach Librarian. This month we’re reading Vanderbilt by Anderson Cooper.

When 11-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt began to work on his father’s small boat ferrying supplies in New York Harbor at the beginning of the nineteenth century, no one could have imagined that one day he would, through ruthlessness, cunning, and a pathological desire for money, build two empires—one in shipping and another in railroads—that would make him the richest man in America. His staggering fortune was fought over by his heirs after his death in 1877, sowing familial discord that would never fully heal. it. By 2018, when the last Vanderbilt was forced out of the seventy-room estate, the family would have been unrecognizable to the tycoon who started it all.

Now, great-great-great-grandson Anderson Cooper, joins with historian Katherine Howe to explore the story of his legendary family and their outsized influence. Moving from the hardscrabble wharves of old Manhattan to the lavish drawing rooms of Fifth Avenue, from the ornate summer palaces of Newport to the courts of Europe, and all the way to modern-day New York, Cooper and Howe wryly recount the triumphs and tragedies of an American dynasty.

Written with a unique insider’s viewpoint, this is a rollicking, quintessentially American history as remarkable as the family it so vividly captures.