The number one  New York Times  bestselling authors of  Vanderbilt  return with another  riveting history of  a legendary American family, the  Astors, and how they built and lavished their fortune.

The story of the  Astors  is a quintessentially American story-of ambition, invention, destruction, and reinvention.

From 1783, when German immigrant John Jacob Astor first arrived in the United States, until 2009, when Brooke Astor’s son, Anthony Marshall, was convicted of defrauding his elderly mother, the Astor name occupied a unique place in American society.

The family  fortune,  first made  by  a  beaver trapping business that grew into an empire,  was  then amplified by holdings in  Manhattan  real estate. Over the ensuing generations,  Astors  ruled  Gilded Age  New York society  and  inserted themselves into political and cultural life,  but also suffered the most  famous loss on the  Titanic,  one of  many shocking and unexpected twists in  the family’s story.

In this unconventional, page-turning  historical biography, featuring black-and-white and color photographs,  #1  New York Times  bestselling authors  Anderson Cooper and  Katherine  Howe  chronicle the lives of the  Astors  and explore what the Astor name has come to mean in America-offering a window onto the making of America itself.