Booked for the Day Discussion Group

Please join us to discuss, Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune, by Anderson Cooper. If you would like to attend, please contact Jean Demas at demasj@lislelibrary.org.

The story of the Astor family is a quintessentially American story—of ambition, invention, destruction, and reinvention. From 1783, when German immigrant John Jacob Astor first arrived in the United States, until 2009, when Brooke Astor’s son, Anthony Marshall, was convicted of defrauding his elderly mother, the Astor name occupied a unique place in American society.

The family fortune, first made by a beaver trapping business that grew into an empire, was then amplified by holdings in Manhattan real estate. Over the ensuing generations, Astors ruled Gilded Age New York society and inserted themselves into political and cultural life, but also suffered the most famous loss on the Titanic, one of many shocking and unexpected twists in the family’s story.

Please contact Jean Demas, Literacy Librarian, demasj@lislelibrary.org , for more information.