In the United States, the Vanderbilt name is synonymous with wealth and privilege. However, the reality is much murkier and often depressing. In VANDERBILT: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty, Anderson Cooper, with the help of historian and novelist Katherine Howe, seeks to chart the more notorious portion of the family’s sad but inevitable decline. Cooper is the son of Gloria Vanderbilt, who is directly descended from Cornelius Vanderbilt, the patriarch who made the family’s initial fortune and jettisoned the Vanderbilt name into the history books.

The Commodore, as Cornelius was nicknamed, had 13 children, and his son William Henry Vanderbilt (nicknamed Billy) had nine. Cooper descends from Billy’s fourth child and third son, Cornelius Vanderbilt II, who was called Corneil. While the Commodore began the family’s fortune, it was Billy who helped increase it, providing this line of the Vanderbilts with incredible wealth.

"This cautionary tale of excess and hubris proves that wealth does not buy happiness; instead, in this case, it leads to loneliness and sorrow."

The Vanderbilt history is both storied and long. Cramming it into less than 300 pages means that just the highlights are included and only certain Vanderbilts are mentioned. Extreme excess and bad behavior arising from privilege populate these pages, raising the question of why and how some families thrive and others self-destruct.

Each chapter opens with a quote from AMY VANDERBILT’S COMPLETE BOOK OF ETIQUETTE: A Guide to Gracious Living, which was published in 1952. These carefully selected snippets provide an interesting contrast to the events that follow. For example, Amy states in her book, “I dislike display and foolish expenditure… spending to impress those how have less”; the ensuing pages detail an infamous ball hosted by Alva Vanderbilt in 1883.

Curiously, Cooper states near the end of the book that Amy Vanderbilt is a distant relative who capitalized on her name to create her etiquette guide, “a far distant cousin laterally descended from the Commodore, who built a brand on her famous last name.” Pointing this out after quoting her at the start of each chapter seems contradictory but in line with how most of the Vanderbilts lived.

Says Cooper, “I think of my mother as the last Vanderbilt… the last to live what we might think of as the Vanderbilt life.” She was the last to ride in chauffeured cars, the last to stay at the Breakers when it was still a private home, and the last to have her obituary make the front page of newspapers everywhere. She lived a lonely but entitled life, and framing her as the last in the Vanderbilt line is both fitting and sad.

VANDERBILT is a glimpse into an iconic family that few will wish they could join. This cautionary tale of excess and hubris proves that wealth does not buy happiness; instead, in this case, it leads to loneliness and sorrow.