When the Astors Owned New York

Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age

Ebook
On sale Jun 01, 2006 | 208 Pages | 9781101218815
In this marvelous anecdotal history, Justin Kaplan––Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Mark Twain––vividly brings to life a glittering, bygone age.

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
 
Justin Kaplan is an editor, biographer, and author of Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain and Walt Whitman: A Life, among other books. He is a member of the American Academy of  Arts and Letters. View titles by Justin Kaplan

About

In this marvelous anecdotal history, Justin Kaplan––Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Mark Twain––vividly brings to life a glittering, bygone age.

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
 

Author

Justin Kaplan is an editor, biographer, and author of Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain and Walt Whitman: A Life, among other books. He is a member of the American Academy of  Arts and Letters. View titles by Justin Kaplan