york the hotel When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age

york the hotel When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age


In this marvelous anecdotal history, Justin Kaplanâ€"Pulitzer Prizeâ€"winning biographer of Mark Twainâ€"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.