Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt

Arthur T. Vanderbilt II

Aug 2014 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Patrick Lawlor

About this audiobook

Vanderbilt: The very name is synonymous with the Gilded Age. The family patriarch, "the Commodore," built a fortune that made him the world's richest man by 1877. Yet less than fifty years after his death, no Vanderbilt was counted among the world's richest people. Written by descendant Arthur T. Vanderbilt II, Fortune's Children traces the dramatic and amazingly colorful history of this great American family, from the rise of industrialist and philanthropist Cornelius Vanderbilt to the fall of his progeny-wild spendthrifts whose profligacy bankrupted a vast inheritance.

About the author

Arthur T. Vanderbilt II is an attorney, an award-winning author, and an avid gardener. He practices law in New Jersey and is the author of Golden Days, The Making of a Bestseller, and Gardening in Eden. Changing Law, a biography of his grandfather Arthur T. Vanderbilt, won the American Bar Association's Scribes Award. Arthur lives in northern New Jersey.

Patrick Lawlor has recorded over three hundred audiobooks in just about every genre. He has been an Audie Award finalist multiple times and has garnered several AudioFile Earphones Awards, a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award, and many Library Journal and Kirkus starred audio reviews.