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It’s a running joke among my friends and family that I love all things Anderson Cooper, and they often send me videos and articles about him to tease me/keep me in the know. That said, my network of spies failed to inform me that he was co-writing a new book! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe is Cooper’s third book. Cooper, who narrates the audiobook, opens by talking about his complicated relationship to being a Vanderbilt; it wasn’t until the death of his mother and the birth of his son that he wanted to know anything about the Vanderbilts. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ While I enjoyed learning about the history of the Vanderbilt family, I had mixed feelings about the book itself, the pacing of which often left me confused. I was riveted by the first part of the book, about Cornelius Vanderbilt’s rise and his almost pathological need to achieve money, even when he had more than he could ever possibly spend. I was fascinated by Alva Vanderbilt, and the role she played in establishing the power of socialites in moneyed society (a woman who would later become a huge suffragist). ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ But there are transitions in the book that made me feel like I had fallen asleep reading and woken up in a different section (I hadn’t.) There are entire, very detailed, parts of the book devoted to events or people that are only tangentially related to the Vanderbilts: the sinking of the Lusitania, for example, or the 1934 World Cup Yacht Race, or the rise and fall of Truman Capote. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ While I found Vanderbilt to be interesting and informative, I think it’s been misbranded. If you go into this book wanting to learn more about the Gilded Age in general, I think you’ll be much more satisfied with what you find. TW: suicide ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ID: Copies of Anderson Cooper’s first two books sit spine up next to a kindle displaying the ebook cover of Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty via Instagram https://instagr.am/p/CWvdxHQrt6m/