Commodore Vanderbilt

NATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD In this groundbreaking biography, T.J. Stiles tells the dramatic story of Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt, the combative man and American icon who, through his genius and force of will, did more than perhaps any other individual to create modern capitalism. Meticulously researched and elegantly written, The First Tycoon describes an improbable life, from Vanderbilt’s humble birth during the presidency of George Washington to his death as one of the richest men in American history. In between we see how the Commodore helped to launch the transportation revolution, propel the Gold Rush, reshape Manhattan, and invent the modern corporation. Epic in its scope and success, the life of Vanderbilt is also the story of the rise of America itself.

Corneel flung up that lion head of his, a mingling of amusement and resentment mirrored in his frosty eyes. "Steamship, gal," he corrected. "Steamboats don't go to sea. The Prometheus is the sightliest craft in these waters. I didn't see her beat in England, either. And I'll tell ye something else. She's the fust ocean steamer ever built with one man's money." A flame of high egotism ennobled his conqueror's face. "She's Cornelius Van Derbilt's, as she puts to sea. No other man owns ary dollar of her. She's mine, b'God, mine!" -from Chapter IV His name has not endured like those of his contemporaries, but Arthur D. Howden Smith was, in the early years of the 20th century, a tremendously popular author of pulp fiction on a par with E.E. "Doc" Smith and Edgar Rice Burroughs. And the same boisterous enthusiasm that made his adventure tales of pirates and Vikings so rip-roaring readable bursts forth from his nonfiction as well. Here, in this 1927 work, Howden Smith tells the story of the life of American railroad and shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, from his family's roots in Holland to the last weeks before his death, when he clung to life with the pitbull tenacity that has taken him from a humble Staten Island childhood to wealth, fame, and power. Fun and feisty, this is a terrific work of classic biography. Also available from Cosimo Classics: Howden Smith's John Jacob Astor: Landlord of New York. ARTHUR DOUGLAS HOWDEN SMITH (1887-1945) was an enormously prolific and diverse writer, penning numerous short stories, biographies, and business studies, but he is best remembered for his many pulp novels, including Porto Bello Gold (a prequel to Treasure Island), The Dead Go Overside, The Doom Trail, Swain's Saga, and others.

Cornelius Vanderbilt was born for business. Though poorly educated, he built an empire on steam power and died a millionaire. Fueled by the spirit of competition and possessing a brilliant mind for business, Vanderbilt became the first true industrial tycoon. He dominated the shipping industry with steamboats and railroads. Vanderbilt changed the way business was done in America. Readers explore the life and triumphs of America's first industrial titan through photographs, anecdotes, sidebars, and more.

Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877) was the son of Cornelius Van Der Bilt (1764-1832) and Phebe Hand (1767-1854) of Port Richmond, Staten Island, New York. He married (1) Sophia Johnson (1795-1868, the daughter of Nathaniel Johnson and Elizabeth Hand (1770-1841) of Richmond Co., New York. Cornelius was the descendant of Jan Aertsen Van Der Bilt (c.1620/25-1705) who married (1) Anneken Hendricks in 1650; (2) Dierber Cornelis and (3) Magdalentje Hanse in 1681. Jan was the first of the family to come to New Amsterdam. He was from the village of Bilt in the province of Utrecht, The Netherlands. Cornelius and Sophia were the parents of thirteen children. Descendant lines are given for their son William Henry Vanderbilt and for the descendants of their daughters.

New York Times bestselling author and journalist Anderson Cooper teams with New York Times bestselling historian and novelist Katherine Howe to chronicle the rise and fall of a legendary American dynasty—his mother’s family, the Vanderbilts. One of the Washington Post's Notable Works of Nonfiction of 2021 When eleven-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. Though his son Billy doubled the money left by “the Commodore,” subsequent generations competed to find new and ever more extraordinary ways of spending it. By 2018, when the last Vanderbilt was forced out of The Breakers—the seventy-room summer estate in Newport, Rhode Island, that Cornelius’s grandson and namesake had built—the family would have been unrecognizable to the tycoon who started it all. Now, the Commodore’s great-great-great-grandson Anderson Cooper, joins with historian Katherine Howe to explore the story of his legendary family and their outsized influence. Cooper and Howe breathe life into the ancestors who built the family’s empire, basked in the Commodore’s wealth, hosted lavish galas, and became synonymous with unfettered American capitalism and high society. Moving from the hardscrabble wharves of old Manhattan to the lavish drawing rooms of Gilded Age 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 unlike any other. Written with a unique insider’s viewpoint, this is a rollicking, quintessentially American history as remarkable as the family it so vividly captures.

Vanderbilt: the very name signifies wealth. The family patriarch, "the Commodore," built up a fortune that made him the world's richest man by 1877. Yet, less than fifty years after the Commodore's death, one of his direct descendants died penniless, and no Vanderbilt was counted among the world's richest people. Fortune's Children tells the dramatic story of all the amazingly colorful spenders who dissipated such a vast inheritance.

Armed with a trove of previously unreleased archives, Edward J. Renehan Jr. offers a compelling portrait of Cornelius Vanderbilt, who built large shipping and rail enterprises into cornerstones of the American economy, and amassed one of the greatest fortunes the world has ever known. This is the definitive biography of a man whose influence on American business was unsurpassed in his day—or any other.