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: The First Tycoon

The Epic Life of Cornelius

Vanderbilt

By TJ Stiles

Knopf Doubleday

$37.50

736 Pages

This book—winner of the 2009 National Book Award for nonfiction—is a gripping, groundbreaking biography of the combative man whose genius and force of will created modern capitalism. Humbly born on Staten Island during George Washington’s presidency, Cornelius

“Commodore” Vanderbilt—an American icon—rose from boatman to builder of the nation’s largest fleet of steamships to lord of a railroad empire. Lincoln consulted him on steamship strategy during the Civil War; Jay Gould was first his uneasy ally and then sworn enemy; and

Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for President of the US, was his spiritual counsellor. We see Vanderbilt help to launch the transportation revolution, propel the Gold Rush, reshape Manhattan, and invent the modern corporation—in fact, as TJ Stiles elegantly argues, Vanderbilt did more than perhaps any other individual to create the economic world we live in today.

In The First Tycoon, Stiles offers the first complete, authoritative biography of this titan, and the first comprehensive account of the Commodore’s personal life. It is a sweeping, fast-moving epic, and a complex portrait of the great man. Vanderbilt, Stiles shows, embraced the philosophy of the Jacksonian Democrats and withstood attacks by his conservative enemies for being too competitive. He was a visionary who pioneered business models. At the time of his death, he was worth an estimated $100 million. According to the Forbes magazine in September 2008, Bill Gates was worth $57 billion, and if he sold all his assets, he would have got $1 for every $138 in circulation. On the other hand, if Vanderbilt could have done the same at his death, he would have taken $1 out of every $20, inclusive of cash and bank deposits. He was an unschooled fistfighter who came to command the respect of New York’s social elite. And he was a father who struggled with a gambling-addicted son, a husband who was loving yet abusive, and, finally, an old man who was obsessed with contacting the dead.