Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty - Anderson Cooper  ## Metadata - Author: **Anderson Cooper** - Full Title: Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty - Category: #books ## Highlights - If our country’s mythos is based on the belief that anyone can be rich if they have enough gumption, have enough grit—or, as we shall see, have enough ruthlessness—then The Breakers is everything our culture tells us to want and promises we can have if only we are willing to work hard enough. It is arguably the most extreme expression of the loaded promises of the American dream. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j0kkbw3c7nah3kha8s11r6tt)) - New York has always offered up the possibility of forging a new self, a new identity, making new wealth out of nothing. New York has done this since before it was New York. Cornelius Vanderbilt may not have been the first person to remake himself in New York City, but his rise from hardscrabble rural obscurity to a level of wealth never before seen in America, and rarely paralleled since, places him squarely within the persistent American mythology that holds that success is tantalizingly available to anyone with the cunning and discipline to seize it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j0kmza91vfggjsxf77dc64py)) - But he needed a ruthless business manager who was willing to smash the monopoly alongside him—first, by slashing prices, a competition-beating technique that Vanderbilt would gladly use to destroy business rivals in the decades to come; and second, by bringing a case before the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the legal basis of the monopoly. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j0kqryv93k2gkhr5kt81j9fc)) - But Willie belonged to the first generation of Vanderbilts to feel that their primary purpose in life was to consume, which wasn’t much of a purpose. In 1920, shortly before he died, he was quoted in the *New York Times* saying, “My life was never destined to be quite happy. . . . Inherited wealth is a real handicap to happiness. It is as certain a death to ambition as cocaine is to morality.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j0qfbeb0c6mzya12j87n8qg4))