Mrs. Astor, undisputed queen of New York society in the decades before the First World War, used her prestige to create a social aristocracy of unparalleled extravagance and exclusivity. Her story, which reads like a novel by Edith Wharton, sheds important new light on the origins, lifestyle, and social competitiveness of this aristocracy, and it is told here with vigor and elegance by Eric Homberger. Homberger argues that the arrival in New York of a tidal wave of new wealth after the Civil War pushed the city's old families into a redefinition of their position, one that now included public visibility. Mrs. Astor presided over this new era, helping to create the Patriarchs, whose annual balls were the most sought after social events of the era, and establishing the definitive list of the socially acceptable families. Homberger's diverting account of the lives of New York's high society recreates this world and shows how its members became America's first celebrities.
