“In this family history, Vanderbilt
dramatizes both the successes and excesses of America’s Gilded Age—the enormous
new wealth, the lavish lifestyles, and, later, the desperate schemes to
maintain social status and fortune, contesting wills, matchmaking with
nobility, and, most notably, battling for custody of ‘Little Gloria.’ But the
story is not so much about people as the palaces they built—the Breakers, the
Biltmore, and mansions which used to occupy blocks of now-prime Manhattan real
estate—all of which became white elephants sold to preservation societies or
Towers of Babels that fell under a wave of taxes and upkeep cost. An absorbing
social history.”