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 dynasty, 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, built the iconic Waldorf-Astoria, 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 decades of American history.

How does one of America’s greatest fortunes disappear?

The Fur Trader Patriarch: The ruthless story of John Jacob Astor, a German immigrant who built an empire on beaver pelts and Manhattan real estate to become America’s first multimillionaire. The Mrs. Astor: A look inside the exclusive world of Caroline Astor, the formidable matriarch who defined and dominated New York’s elite “Four Hundred” with an iron fist. From Rise to Ruin: A multi-generational family saga of ambition and reinvention, tracing the Astor money from iconic hotels to the most famous loss on the Titanic. The Last Mrs. Astor: The captivating and controversial life of Brooke Astor, from her reinvention as a celebrated philanthropist to the shocking elder abuse scandal that marked the family’s final, tragic chapter.