Overview

This biography, based on firsthand knowledge and interviews with Mrs. Astor’s friends and the heads of New York’s great cultural institutions, gives us back the woman so loved and admired. At the age of 51, Brooke Astor wedded the notoriously ill-tempered Vincent Astor, who died in 1959. In a highly publicized courtroom battle, she fought off an attempt to break Vincent’s will, which left $67 million to the Vincent Astor Foundation. As the foundation’s president, Mrs. Astor would use this legacy to benefit New York City. She would personally visit every grant applicant and charm anyone she met. At her hundredth birthday, princes and presidents honored her, but in 2006 a grandson petitioned the courts to have his father removed as Brooke’s guardian. Once again an Astor court battle became the stuff of headlines.

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9780393331608

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Reviews

Kiernan...brings out the fascinating paradoxes of Brooke Astor's courageous, fiercely inventive career as a wife and a widow. Kiernan resurrects the monument as she appeared when the author first met her, over lunch at the Carlyle in 1999: neither polished to a blinding luster nor especially tarnished, but imposing and original just the same.--Liesl Schillinger This sympathetic telling of [Brooke Astor's] story should counterbalance all that gossipy sensationalism. A gently revealing biography that does an especially good job of portraying Mrs. Astor before she was, well, Mrs. Astor.--Daniel Akst Restor[es] Mrs. Astor to her throne. An intimate and affectionate portrait of a woman who reinvented herself at age 56.--Bob Minzesheimer A concise and engaging look at the tiny doyenne of society...Ms. Kiernan's book is most valuable as a catalog of all the things that Mrs. Astor did for us.--Hillary Frey

A concise and engaging look at the tiny doyenne of society...Ms. Kiernan's book is most valuable as a catalog of all the things that Mrs. Astor did for us. -- Hillary Frey - New York Observer An intimate and affectionate portrait of a woman who reinvented herself at age 56. -- Bob Minzesheimer - USA Today Restor[es] Mrs. Astor to her throne. -- The Economist A gently revealing biography that does an especially good job of portraying Mrs. Astor before she was, well, Mrs. Astor. -- Daniel Akst - Wall Street Journal This sympathetic telling of [Brooke Astor's] story should counterbalance all that gossipy sensationalism. -- The Atlantic Kiernan resurrects the monument as she appeared when the author first met her, over lunch at the Carlyle in 1999: neither polished to a blinding luster nor especially tarnished, but imposing and original just the same. -- Liesl Schillinger - New York Times Book Review Kiernan...brings out the fascinating paradoxes of Brooke Astor's courageous, fiercely inventive career as a wife and a widow. -- Boston Globe

Author Information

A former editor at The New Yorker, Frances Kiernan is the author of The Last Mrs. Astor: A New York Story and Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy. She lives in New York City.

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