Virginia Cowles
ASIN: B012T5T7XO
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Pages: 256
The Astors; whose immense fortune came from furs, ships, and real estate; whose mansions bejewelled Fifth Avenue, Newport, and England; who became leaders — first in America, then in Britain — of polite society; whose births and deaths, private feuds and public scandals, political ambitions and philanthropic munificence have fascinated the rest of the world for close to two centuries.The story of their rise to prominence, of their long reign, of their influence and importance, is more than the saga of a rich and unusual family, for it illuminates from a unique vantage point the history of the past two hundred years.When twenty-year-old John Jacob Astor arrived in icebound Baltimore from Germany in 1783, his ambition was to live comfortably from the sale of musical instruments. At his death in 1848, he was the richest man in America — he ruled over an empire and had founded a dynasty. ...