"The story of the Astors is an extraordinary but true tale of ambition, invention, destruction, and reinvention--and of cunning, determination, hard work, hubris, infighting, and greed. One of the wealthiest men to have ever lived, John Jacob Astor first arrived in New York in 1783 and built a fortune through a ruthless expansion of his beaver trapping business, which he grew into an empire through real estate that enriched him at the expense of Manhattan's...

In 1811 a group of American traders built a fort at the mouth of the Columbia River, named Fort Astoria in honour of its financier, John Jacob Astor. Envisioned as the spur of a fur-trading empire, by 1813 the project was a business failure and the fort was surrendered to the British. But in its short life Astoria rendered incalculable benefits to public understanding of the Great Northwest. The exploration of trade routes, the description of various...

"Madeleine Talmage Force is just seventeen when she attracts the attention of John Jacob "Jack" Astor. Madeleine is beautiful, intelligent, and solidly upper-class, but the Astors are in a league apart. Jack's mother was the Mrs. Astor, American royalty and New York's most formidable socialite. Jack is dashing and industrious - a hero of the Spanish-American war, an inventor, and a canny businessman. Despite their twenty-nine-year age difference and...