Great Estates: The Lifestyles and Homes of American Magnates

New York: Universe Publishing, 2009. Cloth, 240 pages, illustrations (chiefly colour); 33 cm. Firm binding, clean inside copy. Dust jacket, faded at extremities, protected in a mylar cover. OVERSIZE! No priority/international, except by arrangement. Richly illustrated with colour plates. "Beginning with the colonial era, when trade was overtaking landholding as a way to get rich, this book follows the restless careers of the U.S.'s most brilliant and driven merchants, industrialists, and financiers as they mastered a new economic world of textiles, railroads, oil, and steel. With the twentieth century came fresh opportunities: automobiles, motion pictures, broadcasting, publishing and retailing on a massive scale, and the vast horizon of high technology. Meet John Hancock, colonial Boston's 'limousine liberal', and learn how John Jacob Astor parlayed success in the fur trade into status as Manhattan's master landlord and richest man in America - only to be eclipsed by Cornelius Vanderbilt, who leaped like a nimble Croesus from steamships to railroads." - Publisher. CONTENTS: CH. 1. THE YANKEE SHIPS WERE EVERYWHERE: The Hancocks; Harrison Gray Otis; Elias Hasket Derby; The Crowninshields; The Brown Brothers; John Jacob Astor; The du Ponts of Delaware. CH. 2. THE GILDED AGE: Cornelius Vanderbilt; Railroad Giants; William Cornelius Van Horne; Jay Gould; Edward Henry Harriman; J. P. Morgan; Andrew Carnegie; Henry Clay Frick; John Davison Rockefeller; Retail Magnates; Joseph Pulitzer. CH. 3. TITANS OF THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY: William Randolph Hearst; Henry Ford; Walter P. Chrysler; George Eastman; Hollywood Moguls; Walt Disney; Howard Hughes; Henry Flagler; John Ringling; James Deering; CH. 4. MODERN MOGULS: David Sarnoff; William S. Paley; Ted Turner; Malcolm Forbes; Sam Walton; Warren Buffett; Steven Spielberg; George Lucas; High-Tech Giants; Larry Ellison; Jim Clark; Bill Gates.. 1st. Hardcover. Fine/Very Good. Folio.