First book of 2025 finished. This one was a long time in getting it done, I had started it sometime around Thanksgiving. The rest of the title is: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt. This is a book about the Vanderbilt family & how the Commodore back in the 1880s was probably the richest person in the world, at least for sure in the US. The next generation did well in growing their money but also started some of the spending and splitting up of the money that caused it to dwindle then over the next couple generations. The author mentions in the introduction that in 1973 when the first family reunion happened a 120 descendants gathered none of them were millionaires. Now does this mean a few that didn't come were millionaires--maybe but still a kind of shocking result. Reading this book it is crazy to think but this family sort of with a few other families, defined the Gilded Age in the US. They built crazy large mansions and each family usually built at least 2 and probably 3 with a large farm/estate figured as well. As the years went these mansions were too expensive to maintain & most have been tore down or donated off as museums, a university, etc. The ones in New York around 5th street were tore down because the land underneath was more valuable than the enormous mansion. Just a sad overall story of a super sized wealth and what became of it and especially the people.
This makes you think about the super wealthy today the Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, etc and what a couple generations later it will look like. It does seem some of them are trying to set the politics up to help them grown and maintain their wealth, something the Vanderbilts never really did.
There are 12 WL for this book so I will probably post & send off at some point but since don't need credits right now, am in no hurry to do so.
