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When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age
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When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age Paperback - 2007

by Justin Kaplan

This newest book by Pulitzer Prize winner Kaplan is a sparkling combination of biography, social history, architectural appreciation, and pure pleasure, as he looks at the Astor familys dynasty and its contributions to the city of New York.


Summary

In this marvelous anecdotal history, Justin Kaplan?Pulitzer Prize?winning biographer of Mark Twain?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.

From the publisher

In this marvelous anecdotal history, Justin Kaplan--Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Mark Twain--vividly brings to life a grand story from the glittering Gilded 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

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Details

  • Title When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age
  • Author Justin Kaplan
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition Reprint
  • Pages 208
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Penguin Books, New York
  • Date June 26, 2007
  • Illustrated Yes
  • Features Bibliography, Illustrated, Index, Price on Product - Canadian, Table of Contents
  • ISBN 9780452288584 / 0452288584
  • Weight 0.5 lbs (0.23 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.6 in (21.08 x 13.72 x 1.52 cm)
  • Ages 18 to UP years
  • Grade levels 13 - UP
  • Themes
    • Chronological Period: 19th Century
    • Chronological Period: 1851-1899
    • Cultural Region: Mid-Atlantic
    • Cultural Region: Northeast U.S.
    • Geographic Orientation: New York
    • Locality: New York, N.Y.
  • Library of Congress subjects Hotels - New York (State) - New York -, Astor family
  • Dewey Decimal Code 647.940

Media reviews

A gem of a book . . . No one since [Henry] James has written with such ease and grace about the era of excess as Kaplan. (Megan Marshall, author of The Peabody Sisters)

Mr. Kaplan, a dazzling stylist, is perfectly suited to his subject: what Henry James lovingly called æhotel civilizationæ . . . [A] splendid book about a bygone age that has not quite gone away. (The New York Sun)

About the author

Justin Kaplan was an editor, biographer, and author of Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain and Walt Whitman: A Life, among other books. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died in 2014.
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When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age
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When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age

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

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

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