John Jacob Astor and the First Great American Fortune

John Jacob Astor and the First Great American Fortune PDF Author: Alexander Emmerich
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476603820
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
This biography analyzes Astor's rise from poor German immigrant in 1784 to the first modern millionaire--he was one before the term "millionaire" entered the English language. Many consider him to be the fourth wealthiest American of all times. After his death in 1848, the public began to discuss the "responsibility" of a millionaire. Some argued that he must have been greedy and cold. Some voices demanded that he should have given all his money back to the United States. More liberal thinkers praised him for his genius and vision. This biography presents a balanced picture. Astor was the founder of the first American settlement on the Pacific (Astoria, Oregon) and of New York's fine hotels the Astor House and the Waldorf-Astoria, as well as a developer of the American West and a fur trader. Many American cities and sites are named after him. He donated the Astor Library to the city of New York (it became the first public library of the city), now part of the New York Public Library.

John Jacob Astor and the First Great American Fortune

John Jacob Astor and the First Great American Fortune PDF Author: Alexander Emmerich
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476603820
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
This biography analyzes Astor's rise from poor German immigrant in 1784 to the first modern millionaire--he was one before the term "millionaire" entered the English language. Many consider him to be the fourth wealthiest American of all times. After his death in 1848, the public began to discuss the "responsibility" of a millionaire. Some argued that he must have been greedy and cold. Some voices demanded that he should have given all his money back to the United States. More liberal thinkers praised him for his genius and vision. This biography presents a balanced picture. Astor was the founder of the first American settlement on the Pacific (Astoria, Oregon) and of New York's fine hotels the Astor House and the Waldorf-Astoria, as well as a developer of the American West and a fur trader. Many American cities and sites are named after him. He donated the Astor Library to the city of New York (it became the first public library of the city), now part of the New York Public Library.

John Jacob Astor

John Jacob Astor PDF Author: Axel Madsen
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0471009350
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
On The Deal Maker: How William C. Durant Made General Motors: "A well-written biography."-New York Times On Stanwyck: The Life and Times of Barbara Stanwyck: "Madsen's admirably researched, insightful portrait of her aloof nature . . . reveals she was always torn between her wish to give of herself and her need to be in control."-Christian Science Monitor On Chanel: A Woman of Her Own: "Fascinating . . . . Takes the reader behind the coromandel veneers of Chanel's life."-New York Times Book Review "Carefully knits together the complex pattern of Chanel's complicated existence. It's not an easy task."-Toronto Globe and Mail On Gloria and Joe: "Axel Madsen finally gives the public a fascinating chronicle of the romance that could have ruined more than two careers."-Dallas Morning News On Cousteau: "Both critical and understanding. And it is exceptionally readable. Readers are well advised to take the plunge."-Chicago Tribune On Malraux: "Will stand as the best of more than a dozen books about Malraux in print."-Kansas City Star

History of the Great American Fortunes

History of the Great American Fortunes PDF Author: Gustavus Myers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Capitalists and financiers
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
I. pt. I. Conditions in settlement and colonial times. pt. II. The great land fortunes.--II-III. Great fortunes from railroads.

Astoria

Astoria PDF Author: Peter Stark
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 006221831X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
In the tradition of The Lost City of Z and Skeletons in the Zahara, Astoria is the thrilling, true-adventure tale of the 1810 Astor Expedition, an epic, now forgotten, three-year journey to forge an American empire on the Pacific Coast. Peter Stark offers a harrowing saga in which a band of explorers battled nature, starvation, and madness to establish the first American settlement in the Pacific Northwest and opened up what would become the Oregon trail, permanently altering the nation's landscape and its global standing. Six years after Lewis and Clark's began their journey to the Pacific Northwest, two of the Eastern establishment's leading figures, John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson, turned their sights to founding a colony akin to Jamestown on the West Coast and transforming the nation into a Pacific trading power. Author and correspondent for Outside magazine Peter Stark recreates this pivotal moment in American history for the first time for modern readers, drawing on original source material to tell the amazing true story of the Astor Expedition. Unfolding over the course of three years, from 1810 to 1813, Astoria is a tale of high adventure and incredible hardship in the wilderness and at sea. Of the more than one hundred-forty members of the two advance parties that reached the West Coast—one crossing the Rockies, the other rounding Cape Horn—nearly half perished by violence. Others went mad. Within one year, the expedition successfully established Fort Astoria, a trading post on the Columbia River. Though the colony would be short-lived, it opened provincial American eyes to the potential of the Western coast and its founders helped blaze the Oregon Trail.

History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I

History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I PDF Author: Gustavus Myers
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3752413573
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
Reproduction of the original: History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I by Gustavus Myers

History of the Great American Fortunes

History of the Great American Fortunes PDF Author: Gustavus Myers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 744

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Book Description


Masters of Enterprise

Masters of Enterprise PDF Author: H.W. Brands
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476726930
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
From the early years of fur trading to today's Silicon Valley empires, America has proved to be an extraordinarily fertile land for the creation of enormous fortunes. Each generation has produced one or two phenomenally successful leaders, often in new industries that caught contemporaries by surprise, and each of these new fortunes reconfirmed the power of fanatically single-minded visionaries. John Jacob Astor and Cornelius Vanderbilt were the first American moguls; John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan were kingpins of the Gilded Age; David Sarnoff, Walt Disney, Ray Kroc, and Sam Walton were masters of mass culture. Today Oprah Winfrey, Andy Grove, and Bill Gates are giants of the Information Age. America has again and again been the land of dizzying mountains of wealth. Here, in a wittily told and deeply insightful history, is a complete set of portraits of America's greatest generators of wealth. Only such a collective study allows us to appreciate what makes the great entrepreneurs really tick. As H. W. Brands shows, these men and women are driven, they are focused, they deeply identify with the businesses they create, and they possess the charisma necessary to persuade other talented people to join them. They do it partly for the money, but mostly for the thrill of creation. The stories told here -- including how Nike got its start as a business-school project for Phil Knight; how Robert Woodruff almost refused to take control of Coca-Cola to spite his father; how Thomas Watson saved himself from prison by rescuing Dayton, Ohio, from a flood; how Jay Gould nearly cornered the gold market; how H. L. Hunt went from gambling at cards to gambling with oil leases -- make for a narrative that is always lively and revealing and often astonishing. An observer in 1850, studying John Jacob Astor, would not have predicted the rise of Henry Ford and the auto industry. Nor would a student of Ford in 1950 have anticipated the takeoff of direct marketing that made Mary Kay Ash a trusted guide for millions of American women. Full of surprising insights, written with H. W. Brands's trademark flair, the stories in Masters of Enterprise are must reading for all students of American business history.

When the Astors Owned New York

When the Astors Owned New York PDF Author: Justin Kaplan
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101218819
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
In this marvelous anecdotal history, Justin Kaplan––Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Mark Twain––vividly brings to life a glittering, bygone age. Endowed with the largest private fortunes of their day, cousins John Jacob Astor IV and William Waldorf Astor vied for primacy in New York society, producing the grandest hotels ever seen in a marriage of ostentation and efficiency that transformed American social behavior. Kaplan exposes it all in exquisite detail, taking readers from the 1890s to the Roaring Twenties in a combination of biography, history, architectural appreciation, and pure reading pleasure

A Journey in Other Worlds

A Journey in Other Worlds PDF Author: John Jacob Astor
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3734063612
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Reproduction of the original: A Journey in Other Worlds by John Jacob Astor

History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I

History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I PDF Author: Gustavus Myers
Publisher: Prabhat Prakashan
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Excerpt from History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. 2 Before setting out to relate in detail the narrative of the amassing of the great individual fortunes from rail roads, it is advisable to present a preliminary survey of the concatenating circumstances leading up to the time when these vast fortunes were rolled together. Without this explanation, this work would be deficient in clarity, and would leave unelucidated many important points, the absence of which might puzzle or vex the reader. Although industrial establishments, as exemplified by mills, factories and shops, much preceded the construe tion of railroads, yet the next great group of fortunes to develop after, and along with, those from land were the fortunes plucked from the control and manipulation of railroad systems. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.