V is for Vanderbilt

Dolls of Our Lives

Allison Horrocks and Mary Mahoney

Society & Culture, History

4.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2024

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There comes a time in every woman's life when she must...flee from her family's summer estate holding precious heirlooms in trash bags?

For this month's Patreon episode, we read Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty. This short, punchy, and very readable family biography was written by Anderson Cooper (descendent of Vanderbilts) and Katherine Howe (descendent of some of Salem's finest). This book chronicles some of the Vanderbilts' finest moments during their ascent into America's elite, along with some of their more challenging times (see opening anecdote, and/or anything to do with Gloria). We consider what motivated Cooper to write the book, and what we can learn from another collective biography of the rich during a period of great economic inequality.

original air date: December 30, 2021

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome everyone to American Girls, the podcast. This is the show where we're reliving the American Girl series book by book except on this show on patron where we're sort of doing whatever we think makes sense to us.
0:23.6	And as we just said on air,
0:25.7	this episode is the one that I know I'm most excited to tape.
0:29.2	I think Allison's with me on this.
0:31.0	This is our We Don't Need a reason. Vanderbilt full coverage. We are
0:35.9	covering Anderson Cooper's memoir. Let's get into it. I'm Mary but for the purposes of
0:40.8	this episode I would like to be called Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney.
0:45.2	I will be going by alternatively, Cornelius, Commodore, Cornell, corny, cornyal,
0:52.4	or the forgotten cor forgotten Cornelius.
0:55.0	Never forget, honestly, RIP.
0:57.0	Wow, thank you for being here, Cornelius, corny, corny 2.
1:01.0	Cornie, cory, Corny,
1:02.5	Junior, not Frank Crawford.
1:05.0	Definitely not Frank Crawford.
1:07.3	We are reading the 2021 book called Vanderbilt,
1:10.7	which notably did come out on my birthday, which I think means it's fate that we had to read it.
1:17.0	This is a book by Anderson Cooper who is a Vanderbilt.
1:19.6	We will explain how and why and whether that's actually true.
1:24.0	And Catherine how, who is a historian.
1:27.0	We're also, I guess, going to hear more about Allison's done some research into her.
1:31.0	I have not.
1:32.0	I've been, Allison, let me just check in with you before we get into the spiritual state of Anderson
	...

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