Product Description

This newest book by Pulitzer Prize winner Justin Kaplan is a sparkling combination of biography, social history, architectural appreciation, and pure pleasure Endowed with the largest private fortunes of their day, two heirs of arch-capitalist John Jacob Astor battled with each other for social primacy. William Waldorf Astor (born 1848) and his cousin John Jacob Astor IV (born 1864) led incomparably privileged lives in the blaze of public attention. Novelist, sportsman, and inventor, John Jacob went down with the Titanic, after turbulent marital adventures and service in the Spanish-American War. Collector of art, antiquities, and stately homes, William Waldorf became a British subject and acquired the title of Viscount Astor. In New York during the 1890s and after, the two feuding Astors built monumental grand hotels, chief among them the original Waldorf-Astoria on lower Fifth Avenue. The Astor hotels transformed social behavior. Home of the chafing dish and the velvet rope, the Waldorf-Astoria drew the rich, famous, and fashionable. It was the setting for the most notorious society event of the era...a costume extravaganza put on by its hosts during a time of widespread need and unemployment. The celebrity-packed lobbies, public rooms, lavish suites, and exclusive restaurants of the grand hotels became distinctive theaters of modern life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20515 in eBooks
• Published on: 2007-02-01
• Released on: 2007-02-01
• Format: Kindle Book
• Number of items: 1

From Publishers Weekly
This frothy look at several generations of Astors by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain is custom-made for the Waldorf gift shop. The tightwad founder of the Astor dynasty was a butcher's son from the German backwater of Waldorf. By the time John Jacob Astor died in 1848 at the age of 84, the richest man in America had turned a fur trade monopoly into a Manhattan real estate empire. Astor House, his "astonishing" luxury hotel adjacent to City Hall, cosseted the likes of Abraham Lincoln and Britain's future King Edward VII in its 80-year history. John Jacob's "phlegmatic and cautious" son, William, increased the family fortune, married a blueblood and sired sons who couldn't abide one another. "Imperious and somber" John Jacob III and playboy William, who was married to society queen Caroline Schermerhorn, passed on the family feud to their sons who managed to combine forces in 1897 to build the Waldorf-Astoria. Prickly and snobbish William Waldorf Astor failed in New York State politics, became a novelist and an art collector, and died a British viscount. John Jacob IV's military service and his death on the Titanic helped temper his reputation as a spoiled fool. B&w photos. (June 5)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
When it opened on Broadway in 1836, John Jacob Astor's hotel Astor House was called a "marvel of the age." However, it was nothing compared to the hotel built some 60 years later by Astor's great-grandsons, William Waldorf and John Jacob IV. Since the cousins could never agree on anything, the Waldorf-Astoria was actually two hotels, connected by corridors that could be sealed off. Henry James, back in the U.S. after an absence of 20 years, stayed there and described it as "one of my few glimpses of perfect human felicity." Kaplan is well known as a biographer, but he presents an unconventional biography here, crafting a fascinating work of social history by focusing on the cousins' hotel-building mania. The Waldorf-Astoria and other Astor hotels served as the stage for the family drama, as well as for people anxious to show off their wealth, and also helped define a new standard of luxury for the aspiring middle class. Mary Ellen Quinn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
A fascinating social history as well as a fun gossipy read. Kaplan has an eye for both the dishy details and the deeper meaning beneath them. This vision makes When the Astors Owned New York the best kind of history: entertaining. -- BookPage

A gem of a book . . . No one since [Henry] James has written with such ease and grace about the era of excess as Kaplan. -- Megan Marshall, author of The Peabody Sisters

A subject that proves more revealing of the nature of American democracy than many hefty social and political histories. -- The Philadelphia Inquirer

An entertaining social history. -- New York Daily News

Justin Kaplan’s short but diverting tale of the career of the Astor family is told with gleeful humor and frequent sarcasm. He defines his subject as a commentary on the progression of taste and social attitude—and does it very well. -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Mr. Kaplan is a companionable writer, and his well-turned sentences are a delight to read. -- The New York Observer

Mr. Kaplan, a dazzling stylist, is perfectly suited to his subject: what Henry James lovingly called ‘hotel civilization’ . . . [A] splendid book about a bygone age that has not quite gone away. -- The New York Sun

Customer Reviews

A slice of life from the turn of the last century
Unlike other reviewers, I didn't read this book with the expectation that I'd get insights into the emotional biographies of each of the Astors. Good thing, too, because it isn't here. The relationships between the family members -- and these people could clearly put on a good snit with one another -- is told at arm's length, as if much of the research done was from the newspapers of the time. We don't know what John Jacob Astor thought as much as what he did. Which is okay, too.

The Astors _were_ slightly bizarre (such as working very hard to find a geneaology more uplifting than a successful furrier who was the son of a Baden butcher), and they were definitely influential; I grew up in 1960s New York, and I still felt their influence through my grandparents' attitudes. Among other things, the Astors owned a huge percentage of the real estate of Manhattan island, including the tenements in which many of our ancestors lived.

Where Kaplan's book succeeds is in its ability to capture the gilded era in which these super-rich people lived: a time in which being rich meant being the _idle_ rich, with little to keep themselves occupied other than social engagements or getting involved in the "mine is bigger and more elegant than yours" competitions -- the objects involved being luxury hotels, in this case.

Today, our celebrities are movie stars and musicians. In this era, Kaplan explains, the attention of the media was on the famous rich, the parties they threw, the hissy fits that occassionally happened in public. "According to Mark Twain," he writes, "the appetite for news of the moneyed classes and their doings could be satisfied even by a page-one headline, RICH WOMAN FALLS DOWN STAIRS, NOT HURT."

The Astors are the excuse for the book, but you'll enjoy the book more by focusing on the part after the colon: blue bloods and grand hotels in a gilded age. We learn quite a bit of detail about each of the hotels built -- primarily the original Waldorf-Astoria, a collaboration of convenience through clenched teeth. That sounds awfully dull, but these hotels were so innovative for their time, and so over-the-top in what they offered and to whom, that the book kept my interest without flagging. Writes the author, "The Waldorf-Astoria made dining and lunching in public fashionable, brought society out into the open, and inspired an age of lavish entertainments, parties, balls, and dinners -- grand occasions previously confined to public houses."

We learn everything from the invention of the Waldorf salad to the relationship between the Astors and the other powerful families of the time (such as the Roosevelts, Vanderbilts, and the Astor who was related by marriage to President Taft), to the political effect of Mrs Cornelia Astor's party during an economic recession, "half a million dollars gone up in frippery and flowers," at which Mrs Astor wore Marie Antoinette's crown jewels. All far, far more entertaining than the "news" in the latest issue of People magazine.

This isn't an important, scholarly book, but I definitely recommend it if you're interested in the ambiance of an earlier age, or curious about the history of New York. Or heck, for no reason whatsoever. It's interesting stuff.

"May The Force Be With You" and the Astor's
I really enjoyed this book and appreciated the many imfomative anecdotes that the author obviously searched out...take it from me...after reading MANY accounts of the famous Bradley-Martin Ball, this author actually researched the fact that the U.S. Marine Band was sent up from Washington. In all the accounts of this famous evening that are available, all that is mentioned is "a band" played ...that's the sort of detail that makes this book so enjoyable.

Having my great-aunt on the cover also added to my selfish recommendation of this book. The only negative I have is that there was an appalling lack of footnotes and specific references. That is truly unfortunate. Otherwise, this book will provide light, entertaining and very enjoyable fare!

Slim volume promises much delivers little
When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age by Justin Kaplan is a bit of a disappointment. From the title and description, I was looking for a biography of the Astor family along with a taste of history about the times they lived in. While there is some brief biographical information in the book, much of it is focused on the hotels they (and others) built. Pages are allotted to the Palmer House in Chicago (which they didn't build), but far less to John Jacob Astor's death on the Titanic. His scandalous divorce and marriage to a much younger woman are also glossed over. His uncle William Waldorf Astor's life is covered in far greater detail, but even he doesn't get full coverage. Gossipy bits and pieces of the times are dropped here and there. Kaplan goes overboard in quoting Henry James in his eloquence about the beauty of hotels. There are pages of quotes from James, often repeated. The book meanders and repeats itself as well. I suppose not much should be expected from such a slim volume, but I was hoping for more.