Vendor
	Foundry Claire Harris
Original language
English
Categories
Politics & government

THE LAST CASTLE

Denise Kiernan

The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation's Largest Home

From the author of the New York Times and international bestseller The Girls of Atomic City comes the fascinating true story behind America’s own Downton Abbey, Biltmore Estate—a palatial Gilded Age masterpiece surprisingly located in the heart of the Appalachian mountains—and the dynamic, troubled, and ultimately triumphant Vanderbilt family whose stewardship and innovation helped not only shape the region but preserve a unique era of history.

Orphaned at a young age, Edith Stuyvesant Dresser claimed lineage from one of New York’s best known families. She grew up in Newport and Paris, and her engagement and marriage to George Vanderbilt was one of the most watched events of Gilded Age society. But none of this prepared her to be mistress of Biltmore House.

Before their marriage, the wealthy and bookish Vanderbilt had dedicated his life to creating a spectacular European-style estate on 125,000 acres of North Carolina wilderness. He summoned the famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted to tame the grounds, collaborated with celebrated architect Richard Morris Hunt to build a 175,000-square-foot chateau, filled it with priceless art and antiques, and erected a charming village beyond the gates. Newlywed Edith was now mistress of an estate nearly three times the size of Washington, DC and benefactress of the village and surrounding rural area. When fortunes shifted and changing times threatened her family, her home, and her community, it was up to Edith to save Biltmore—and secure the future of the region and her husband’s legacy.

The story of Biltmore spans World Wars, the Jazz Age, the Depression, and generations of the famous Vanderbilt family, and features a captivating cast of real-life characters including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, Teddy Roosevelt, John Singer Sargent, James Whistler, Henry James, and Edith Wharton.The Last Castleis the unique American story of how the largest house in America flourished, faltered, and ultimately endured to this day.

Denise Kiernan is an author, journalist and producer. She is author of the New York Times Bestselling book The Girls of Atomic City. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice, Reader's Digest, Saveur, Discover, Ms., and many other publications. In addition to her books for adults and children, she was head writer for ABC's "Who Wants to be Millionaire" during its Emmy award-winning first season and has produced for ESPN, MSNBC and others. As an author, she has been featured on NPR's Weekend Edition, PRI's "The Takeaway," PBSNewsHour and in numerous newspapers and magazines.

Available products
Book Published 2017-09-26 by Touchstone
Book Published 2017-09-26 by Touchstone

Comments

This is a timely and timeless American story of wealth and the responsibility and opportunity it carries. In Kiernan’s hands, this mashup of Downton Abbey-like extravagance set amid the “rugged mountain simplicity” of Appalachia reads like a Southern fairy tale — Brothers Grimm meets Gone with the Wind. A passionately researched family saga of death and divorce, suicide and sickness, fortunes gained and lost, spanning two world wars and set at the crux of the Gilded Age yielding to the modern era, The Last Castle is ultimately a story of fortitude and survival. A stunning and important achievement.

The rich have secrets. In her well-researched and captivating book, Denise Kiernan tells the fascinating story of how a phenomenally wealthy Vanderbilt scion transformed a rural North Carolina town by building the ultimate rich man's folly and reveals the eccentricities, heartaches, and even money problems of these Social Register denizens and their friends and employees.

The many diverting detours Kiernan takes make the book enticing for even those who will never set foot on Biltmore grounds.

If you inherited billions, how would you spend it? Don't bother building America's largest and most lavish home. It's already been done in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, where more than a million visitors a year stroll the grounds of Biltmore Estate. Yet only in the pages of Denise Kiernan'sThe Last Castlewill they come to know George Vanderbilt, the bookish heir who began Biltmore in his 20s, and his determined widow, Edith, who kept it alive as a working estate and a time capsule of the Gilded Age. In the pages of The Last Castle, Kiernan serves up a true tale of American excess, generosity, and perseverance.

This is as much a story about the creation of Biltmore House as it is a window into what it was like to be an American at the turn of the 20th century. Kiernan makes Edith and George Vanderbilt, among the wealthiest Americans at the time, feel like living, breathing human beings navigating life's obstacles in this magnificent book. And she tells the story of how one fiercely devoted woman was able to save the home her husband loved.

The Last Castleis a soaring and gorgeous American story that gripped me from the very first page. With a historian’s keen insight and a poet’s gift for language, Denise Kiernan depicts life at Biltmore with such skill, I felt like I was there through it all: weddings, divorces, elaborate (and slightly bizarre) balls, financial glory, financial ruin, murder, suicide, natural disasters, betrayals, love, loss, despair, and triumph. The story of George and Edith Vanderbilt’s remarkable lives will stay with me for a long time to come.