Download or read book John Jacob Astor written by John Denis Haeger and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biography of John Jacob Astor's life and his career as a merchant, fur trader, and land speculator as vehicles for examining several important themes and issues in American economic and urban development between 1790 and 1860. John Jacob Astor was the best-known and most important American businessman for more than a half-century. His career encompassed the country's formative economic years from the precarious days following the American Revolution to the emergence of an urban-centered manufacturing economy in the late 1840s. Change was the dominant motif of the period, and Astor either exemplified the varied economic, social, and political changes in his business career or he directly affected the course of events. In this biography of John Jacob Astor, John Denis Haeger uses Astor's life and his career as a merchant, fur trader, and land speculator as vehicles for examining several important themes and issues in American economic and urban development between 1790 and 1860. Haeger addresses, in fascinating detail, the complexity of Astor's business endeavors, his extensive connections with the country's dominant political figures, and the "modern" business strategies and managerial techniques that he used to build his business empire. Astor was clearly not a business revolutionary who radically altered an existing system. He was, however, an entrepreneur who exerted a profound change on an industry. He fascinated his contemporaries precisely because he so mirrored his age and its changing business and economic patterns. He grasped the greater size and complexity of an emerging commercial economy in post-Revolutionary America and adopted strategies and structures that transformed the fur and China trades. His investment in city real estate, stocks, bonds, and even a western city made him part of America's evolution into an urbanindustrial society. For his era, John Astor's career was remarkable for its modernity, vision, and reflection of American economic and political values. More than just a personal biography, John Jacob Astor combines economic theories with a fascinating narrative that demonstrates, like no other book has, Astor's impact on the early republic.
Download or read book John Jacob Astor written by Axel Madsen and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2002-03-14 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book Masters of Enterprise written by H. W. Brands and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book John Jacob Astor written by Arthur D. Howden Smith and published by Cosimo, Inc.. This book was released on 2005-12-01 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some weeks later a dray drove up to the Astor store, then at 68 Pine Street, and delivered a number of very heavy little kegs which chinked faintly as they were rolled in through the door. "What on earth are those, Jacob?" Sarah demanded when she happened in during the afternoon. "Der fruits of our East India pass," he answered, his deep-set eyes twinkling merrily. "Money?" He nodded. "Ho-how much?" "Fifty-five t'ousan' dollar." "Jacob!" she gasped. And well she might. It was as rich a coup as he ever achieved. -from "Fur and Tea" New Yorkers can't escape the name Astor: it graces theaters, hotels, street names, and even an entire Queens neighborhood. This delightful biography of the "landlord of New York" explains how John Jacob Astor, who arrived in the city a poor immigrant in 1784, created such a fortune-in real estate, fur, and trade with China-not only for himself but for the city and nation around him that his influence could not be denied. Author Arthur D. Howden Smith was, in the early years of the 20th century, a tremendously popular author of pulp fiction on a par with E.E. "Doc" Smith and Edgar Rice Burroughs. And the same boisterous enthusiasm that made his adventure tales of pirates and Vikings so riproaring readable bursts forth from this classic biography as well. Also available from Cosimo Classics: Howden Smith's Commodore Vanderbilt: An Epic of American Achievement. ARTHUR DOUGLAS HOWDEN SMITH (1887-1945) was an enormously prolific and diverse writer, penning numerous short stories, biographies, and business studies, but he is best remembered for his many pulp novels, including Porto Bello Gold (a prequel to Treasure Island), The Dead Go Overside, The Doom Trail, Swain's Saga, and others.
Download or read book A Journey in Other Worlds written by John Jacob Astor and published by Hyweb Technology Co. Ltd.. This book was released on 2011-12-15 with total page 1253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Journey In Other Worlds: A Romance Of The Future
Download or read book Astoria written by Peter Stark and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book John Jacob Astor Business Man written by Kenneth Wiggins Porter and published by New York, Russell & Russell, 1966 [c1931]. This book was released on 1966 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book John Jacob Astor Business Master written by Larry W Jones and published by . This book was released on 2023-02-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Jacob Astor was a German-American businessman, merchant, real estate mogul, patron of the arts and investor who made his fortune mainly in the fur trade and by investing in real estate in or around New York City. He was the first prominent member of the Astor family and the first multi-millionaire in the United States. His American Fur Company competed with Canada's Northwest Company and Hudson's Bay Company. Astor also formed the Pacific Fur Company and the Southwest Fur Company. This publication "John Jacob Astor - Business Master" follows his career from tiny Waldorf Germany to the big business centers of New York, Montreal and China.
Download or read book American Inventors Entrepreneurs and Business Visionaries written by Charles W. Carey and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This A to Z biographical dictionary contains 260 entries on important Americans from colonial times to the present. Each entry begins with a short description of the person's importance, then the entry provides the person's birth date and information, and proceeds chronologically though his/her life. Suggestions for further reading follow each entry. There is a topical introduction to the book, a bibliography at the end of the book, two subject indexes, and a general index.
Download or read book John Jacob Astor and the First Great American Fortune written by Alexander Emmerich and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-08-07 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Masters of Enterprise written by H.W. Brands and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-04 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Fur Fortune and Empire The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America written by Eric Jay Dolin and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-07-05 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Seattle Times selection for one of Best Non-Fiction Books of 2010 Winner of the New England Historial Association's 2010 James P. Hanlan Award Winner of the Outdoor Writers Association of America 2011 Excellence in Craft Award, Book Division, First Place "A compelling and well-annotated tale of greed, slaughter and geopolitics." —Los Angeles Times As Henry Hudson sailed up the broad river that would one day bear his name, he grew concerned that his Dutch patrons would be disappointed in his failure to find the fabled route to the Orient. What became immediately apparent, however, from the Indians clad in deer skins and "good furs" was that Hudson had discovered something just as tantalizing. The news of Hudson's 1609 voyage to America ignited a fierce competition to lay claim to this uncharted continent, teeming with untapped natural resources. The result was the creation of an American fur trade, which fostered economic rivalries and fueled wars among the European powers, and later between the United States and Great Britain, as North America became a battleground for colonization and imperial aspirations. In Fur, Fortune, and Empire, best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin chronicles the rise and fall of the fur trade of old, when the rallying cry was "get the furs while they last." Beavers, sea otters, and buffalos were slaughtered, used for their precious pelts that were tailored into extravagant hats, coats, and sleigh blankets. To read Fur, Fortune, and Empire then is to understand how North America was explored, exploited, and settled, while its native Indians were alternately enriched and exploited by the trade. As Dolin demonstrates, fur, both an economic elixir and an agent of destruction, became inextricably linked to many key events in American history, including the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812, as well as to the relentless pull of Manifest Destiny and the opening of the West. This work provides an international cast beyond the scope of any Hollywood epic, including Thomas Morton, the rabble-rouser who infuriated the Pilgrims by trading guns with the Indians; British explorer Captain James Cook, whose discovery in the Pacific Northwest helped launch America's China trade; Thomas Jefferson who dreamed of expanding the fur trade beyond the Mississippi; America's first multimillionaire John Jacob Astor, who built a fortune on a foundation of fur; and intrepid mountain men such as Kit Carson and Jedediah Smith, who sliced their way through an awe inspiring and unforgiving landscape, leaving behind a mythic legacy still resonates today. Concluding with the virtual extinction of the buffalo in the late 1800s, Fur, Fortune, and Empire is an epic history that brings to vivid life three hundred years of the American experience, conclusively demonstrating that the fur trade played a seminal role in creating the nation we are today.
Download or read book When the Astors Owned New York written by Justin Kaplan and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-06-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book The Last Mrs Astor A New York Story written by Frances Kiernan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2008-05-17 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Kiernan's sharp-eyed biography brings back a woman who, far into her 90s, relished the dance of life." —O, The Oprah Magazine 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.
Download or read book Great Estates written by William Scheller and published by Universe Publishing(NY). This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Beginning with the colonial era, when trade was overtaking landholding as a way to get rich, this book follows the restless careers of the U.S.'s most brilliant and driven merchants, industrialists, and financiers as they mastered a new economic world of textiles, railroads, oil, and steel. With the twentieth century came fresh opportunities: automobiles, motion pictures, broadcasting, publishing and retailing on a massive scale, and the vast horizon of high technology. Meet John Hancock, colonial Boston's "limousine liberal", and learn how John Jacob Astor parlayed success in the fur trade into status as Manhattan's master landlord and richest man in America - only to be eclipsed by Cornelius Vanderbilt, who leaped like a nimble Croesus from steamships to railroads."--Global Books in Print.
Download or read book United States Entrepreneurs and the Companies They Built written by Wahib Nasrallah and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2003-08-30 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pioneering work provides an index to over 1,700 biographies of prominent U.S. entrepreneurs, innovators and company executives published in over 120 biographical collected works which are identified, examined, and indexed here. These collected works cover a span of over 100 years and include men and women who shaped the history of American enterprise. In the past, collected works such as these have never been indexed but, finally, this book makes the biographies accessible to the general public. Wahib Nasrallah has created the only book available today that indexes these stories of corporate success as they are documented in collected works of biography. A large number of executive biographies are published in collected works that are rich with stories of American enterprise, male and female entrepreneurs of many ethnic backgrounds. Since these stories have never been indexed before, United States Entrepreneurs and the Companies They Built: An Index to Biographies and Collected Works is a central research tool in both academic and corporate worlds.
Download or read book Masters of New York written by Robert Schultz and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2010-10-26 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Masters of New York is a story of one man conquering evil on behalf all of mankind. Joey Patroni has just returned to New York City after serving in Iraq. He has taken a job as driver for one of Americas most powerful men, David Rockefeller. As Joey travels through New York City along with brothers David and Laurance to meet the delegates of the ancient and highly secretive Red and Green Societies, they dare to cross paths with a gentleman from the oldest family of New York Citys eastern establishment, Mr. Alex William Bayard Van Cortlandt Van Rensselaer, the holder of the mysterious Book of Ages. The Red and Green Societies share co-ownership in the highest-priced real estate in the world, Midtown Manhattans Rockefeller Center. The two groups vie for support from the historic land owner, the regent of Columbia University, Alex Van Rensselaer. The Van Rensselaers have been masters of this land since the discovery of the New World and from their inherited land and patroonship of Rensselaerswyck. They may be the ultimate power in the state of New York. The third generation and upstart family of the Rockefellers have seen their fortune and power rise since the time of the American Civil War. David Rockefeller finds that his power is far from being absolute, as it is being pulled on from the past as well as the present. As the three parties break from a simple land deal into a push for all-out war, it has become apparent to Joey that the world in which we live must change. The time has come to pass the burning torch of wealth and power on to new players, but pass the torch on to whom?
