Book Review: ‘Astor’ is a primer on the rise and fall one of America’s richest families
In their new book “Astor,” CNN Journalist Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe trace the storied Astor family's legacy from its inception, when John Jacob Astor emigrated from Germany and established himself in the beaver fur trade, a bloody and highly c... NEW YORK -- It’s hard to escape the name Astor when you are in New York: from Astor Place downtown to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and even the neighborhood of Astoria, Queens, the family’s legacy is everywhere. In “Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune,” CNN journalist Anderson Cooper and his co-writer Katherine Howe trace the famous family’s legacy from its beginning, when John Jacob Astor immigrated from Germany and established himself in the beaver fur trade, a bloody and highly com Pet itive Business . He invested his fortune in buying up land in the rapidly developing island of Manhattan and became one of the richest men in the U.S. Cooper and Howe wrote the book as a follow-up to “Vanderbilt,” a chronicle of Cooper...