CNN anchor and New York Times bestselling author Anderson Cooper chronicles the rise and fall of a legendary American dynasty--his mother's family, the Vanderbilts.Few names are as synonymous with wealth and glamour as "Vanderbilt."When Cornelius Vanderbilt, the teenaged son of a ferryman who worked in New York Harbor, decided to go into business on his own, few would have believed that within six decades he would come to epitomize American business, magnate of a shipping and railroad empire that made him the richest man in the country. In the wake of his death in 1877, Cornelius's heirs bitterly fought over his estate, sowing familial discord that would last for decades. For the generations of Vanderbilts who followed, fortunes were lost and made and lost again. In this tide of success and failure, a particularly American excess displayed itself. By 2019, when the last Vanderbilt left the Breakers-- the estate in Newport, Rhode Island, his son and namesake Cornelius Vanderbilt II buil
