Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty

Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe

How the Mighty Have Fallen – Aubrey McClendon and Chesapeake. Richard Fuld and Lehman. Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX. Elon Musk and Twitter? For me, the rise-and-fall stories of U.S. business leaders makes for fascinating reading perhaps because in the Triumphant Age of Capitalism no one comes closer to the tragic Kings and Queens Shakespeare wrote about in so many plays than the celebrated CEO. Greed. Revenge. Hubris. Shakespeare would’ve loved reading the news pages of today’s Wall Street Journal. “Vanderbilt” tells the story of an early “commercial king” in US history and the subsequent squandering of a once-great fortune by succeeding generations, which, as is so often the case, fail to truly succeed.