Families of Fortune: Life in the Gilded Age

by Alexis Gregory

The author, who writes on travel and the arts for Vanity Fair, Art and Auction, CondT Nast Traveler, and Town and Country , admits in his acknowledgments that he regrets not having lived during the Gilded Age (presumably as one of the gilded), and his narrative does not dwell on injustices or pass judgment on those who prospered. Aided by illustrations on every page (and many that are full-or two-page spreads), his chronicle tells how fortunes were made in the age which began in the 1870s and ended in the US in 1929 and how those fortunes were spent, conveying the extravagant, indulgent, competitive spirit of the time. Lavishly produced. 10x12.5" Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Genres: Nonfiction

224 pages, Hardcover

First published October 15, 1993

About the author

Born in Switzerland in 1936, Gregory grew up in a family where cultural stars like Arthur Rubinstein and Salvador Dalí were regular guests. He began collecting art as a teenager and went on to establish the well-known art publisher Vendome Press, while writing books on travel and history.

Reviews

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This lavish coffee-table style book is not only illustrated with sumptuous color plates but is also a substantive account of how the robber barons of the 19th and early 20th centuries made their fortunes. It's the story of the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Astors, Rothschilds, Krupps, Fricks, and other legendary families who managed to amass astonishing personal fortunes.

Conspicuous consumption before 1870 or thereabouts had been the province of the landed aristocracy, but this new breed of clever capitalist engaged in an all-out contest to gain the status formerly associated with kings, dukes, and earls. This involved a great deal of behind-the-scenes deal-making, back-stabbing of business partners, financial skullduggery, and plain old fashioned hard work. Having acquired immense fortunes, the competitive spirit of these captains of industry then led them to engage in new forms of one-upmanship by building bigger and bigger mansions, acquiring more and more rare masterpieces, hosting grander and grander balls, acquiring the very best racing stock or winning yachting contests, and so forth. And, of course, there was the social ladder to be scaled, a pursuit at which the wives and daughters often excelled.

Families of Fortune does an excellent job of explaining the circumstances which allowed for such amazing accumulations of wealth, but lest we kid ourselves that these days are over, we have only to look at the latest discredited CEO to realize that these titans are still among us, simply a bit better camouflaged.

[Michael Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

The “Gilded Age” is usually taken to mean the period in Europe and the United States following the American Civil War and ending with the Great War (which changed everything forever), though the author redefines the term to run through the Crash of 1929 (when not much changed at all for most of those with huge amounts of money). It was the age of unregulated accrual of immense wealth by a very few, often through bribery of public officials (the Grant Administration was especially skilled at being bought, especially by the Union Pacific Railroad) and the carefully arranged bankruptcy of smaller competitors (which cost thousands of jobs), and at the expense of hundreds of thousands of others who lived in slums (most of which in New York City were owned by the Astors). Workers who tried to organize were suppressed by the Army, called out by the federal government, which the robber barons largely owned. The bloodthirsty and piratical activities of people like John Jacob Astor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, William Randolph Hearst, George Pullman, and most of their immediate descendants would today land them in jail -- though there are those in our nation’s upper economic class who still model themselves on their predecessors. This is an oversize volume with lots of color illustrations and early photos -- most of them depicting egregious examples of conspicuous consumption -- which ought to make for an interesting few hours. However, Gregory’s background is as a travel and “arts” writer for Vanity Fair and Town and Country, and whoever did his historical research for him seems not to have tried very hard. He doesn’t appear to know the facts about Robert Fulton’s supposed monopoly of the New York river trade (which Vanderbilt took over), and his comments about the differences between “Puritan” moneyed families like the Astors (John Jacob was German) and the Vanderbilts (Dutch) and their Jewish counterparts like the Rothschilds ought to raise some eyebrows. This book could have been much, much better.