John Jacob Astor: America's First Multimillionaire - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

AXEL MADSEN has written fifteen biographies, including Chanel: A Woman of Her Own, Gloria and Joe: The Star-Crossed Love Affair of Gloria Swanson and Joe Kennedy, and The Deal Maker: How William C. Durant Made General Motors (Wiley). He lives in Los Angeles.

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On The Deal Maker: How William C. Durant Made General Motors:
"A well-written biography."?New York Times

On Stanwyck: The Life and Times of Barbara Stanwyck:
"Madsen?s admirably researched, insightful portrait of her aloof nature . . . reveals she was always torn between her wish to give of herself and her need to be in control."?Christian Science Monitor

On Chanel: A Woman of Her Own:
"Fascinating . . . . Takes the reader behind the coromandel veneers of Chanel?s life."?New York Times Book Review
"Carefully knits together the complex pattern of Chanel?s complicated existence. It?s not an easy task."?Toronto Globe and Mail

On Gloria and Joe:
"Axel Madsen finally gives the public a fascinating chronicle of the romance that could have ruined more than two careers."?Dallas Morning News

On Cousteau:
"Both critical and understanding. And it is exceptionally readable. Readers are well advised to take the plunge."?Chicago Tribune

On Malraux:
"Will stand as the best of more than a dozen books about Malraux in print."?Kansas City Star

Aus dem Klappentext

"All he touched turned to gold, and it seemed as if fortune delighted in erecting him a monument of her unerring potency."Philip Hone, the last aristocratic mayor of New York

When he died a few months short of his eighty-fifth birthday, John Jacob Astor was the richest man in the United States. The fortune he left behind represented an astounding one-fifteenth of all personal wealth in America. Now, in this revelatory biography, bestselling author Axel Madsen deftly examines the private life of the first multinational entrepreneur of the New World.

Ruthless, tightfisted, but with an amazing gift for organizing business, Astor built an empire that spanned the commercial world of his time. From the end of the American Revolution to the mid-nineteenth century, Astor exhibited his flair for business and left a lasting impact on an emerging America. Astute and audacious, he became one of the first merchants to imagine the world as a global economy. And he had an uncanny knack for bolting out of businesses just before they went bust. He liquidated his China clippers just as tea from India and Japan cut into the tea trade; he dropped his fur interest just as fashion shifted and beavers and other furs became too scarce to be used in the emerging ready-made clothing industry. He then successfully converted his profits into Manhattan real estate.

Astor was a slumlord, a war profiteer, and a merciless jobber who shipped opium to China and sold liquor to Indians. He tricked President Thomas Jefferson into making an exception on the trade embargo against Britain and France for himand profited handsomely when James Madison blundered into the War of 1812.

John Jacob Astor tells the fascinating tale of this German-born son of a butcher who made his fortune in a new world where his money influenced public policy and led him to socialize with presidents and kings. This intriguing book features some of the most fascinating figures in the early history of the United States, including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Aaron Burr, and Washington Irving.

A thrilling account of this legendary figure and the harrowing cross-country expedition he financed in order to rule the rich western fur trade, John Jacob Astor weaves the story of the beginning of big business in America with Astors life and, ultimately, reveals a man whose desire to reinvent himself reshaped the modern world.