Books like Astor by Anderson Cooper

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece examines the glittering yet hollow glamour of the Roaring Twenties as the enigmatic Jay Gatsby pursues love, wealth, and identity across the social divide.

A Little Life follows four college friends in New York as they confront trauma, love and the enduring scars of their pasts, weaving themes of friendship, family, and identity into a profound coming‑of‑age story.

The Goldfinch chronicles the life of thirteen‑year‑old Theo Decker, who survives a museum attack that kills his mother and carries an art piece that becomes a lifelong obsession, exploring loss, identity, and art in contemporary America.

In 1893 Chicago, Erik Larson weaves the story of visionary architect Daniel Burnham and the cunning serial killer H.H. Holmes, whose crimes unfolded against the backdrop of the World’s Columbian Exposition.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks follows the story of Henrietta Lacks, a poor black tobacco farmer whose cancer cells were taken in 1951 without her consent and later became the first immortal human cell line, HeLa, driving major scientific breakthroughs while raising questions of ethics, race, and medical exploitation.

A scholarly examination of Robert Moses, the powerful New York City planner whose initiatives shaped the city’s infrastructure and symbolized the concentration of municipal authority.

In Edith Wharton’s classic, Lily Bart, a beautiful and intelligent young woman devoted to luxury, struggles to navigate New York’s strict social hierarchy and moral expectations, ultimately confronting the limits of her independence.

Discover how the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam on Manhattan shaped America’s founding, from 17th‑century trade to the clash between Peter Stuyvesant and Adriaen van der Donck.

A concise historical exploration of Mary Boleyn, the lesser-known sister of Anne, set within the Tudor court of 1508–1543.

A family history of the Astors from the first patriarch John Jacob Astor and his creation of the Astor fortune to the time of publication.

Facsimile reproductions of more than 300 of the most significant and pivotal New York Times front pages.

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.

A collection of African‑American short stories that explore romance, heartbreak, struggle, and faith, highlighting diverse experiences of love and personal growth.

"Mrs. Astor, undisputed queen of New York society in the decades before the First World War, used her prestige to create a social aristocracy in the city; an invitation to one of her parties was a coveted mark of social acceptance, and exclusion meant social banishment. Mrs. Astor's story, which reads like a novel by Edith Wharton, sheds important new light on the origins, extravagant lifestyle, and social competitiveness of this aristocracy, and it is told here with vigor and elegance by Eric Homberger.". "Homberger argues that the arrival in New York of a tidal wave of new wealth after the Civil War pushed the city's old families into a redefinition of the practices and responsibilities of aristocracy. The public wanted to know more about the neighborhoods, clothes, marriages, entertainments, scandals, and divorces of the wealthy, so during the 1880s, Mrs. Astor presided over a revolution in their social visibility. With Ward McAllister she created the Patriarchs, whose annual balls were the most sought after social events of the era. She also established the "Four Hundred," the definitive list of the socially acceptable, ordaining which families could be accepted and which must remain in social exclusion. Homberger describes the festivities of this social elite, their homes and neighborhoods, and their social struggles. His diverting account of lives of discreet and not-so-discreet excess vividly recaptures New York's high society and shows how its members were transformed into America's first celebrities."--BOOK JACKET.

In the 1920s, 28‑year‑old Hadley Richardson meets Ernest Hemingway in Chicago, marries him, and together they become Hollywood’s golden couple in Paris, navigating self‑doubt, jealousy, and literary ambition amid the expatriate scene.