Author: Justin Kaplan
Genre: Non-Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2006
Pages: 208
Rating: Do Not Recommend
Synopsis: Endowed with the largest private fortunes of their day, cousins John Jacob Astor IV and William Waldorf Astor vied for primacy in New York society, producing the grandest hotels ever seen in a marriage of ostentation and efficiency that transformed American social behavior.
Kaplan exposes it all in exquisite detail, taking readers from the 1890s to the Roaring Twenties in a combination of biography, history, architectural appreciation, and pure reading pleasure.
Review: I love reading about the Gilded Age, but there just wasn't enough story in this book to make it super interesting. It was factual information after factual information, and none of the characters really came to life. Family feuds and the Astor wives were merely glossed over while there is plenty of fodder for a novel such as this.
It was difficult to keep all the Astor's straight since they shared many of the same names, which isn't the author's fault, but his timeline skipped around and that made it even more difficult. This just didn't follow a natural timeline that kept the story moving forward.
Mrs. Astor Regrets is a more entertaining read about this family.
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