IN THE SPOTLIGHT

that obsession damaged those around him, and succeeding generations of Vanderbilts, fairly and unfairly, became symbols of the “idle rich” and frittered away a fortune.

“Certainly, when I started working in news, I didn’t want to show up on stories and have people say, ‘Oh, this guy is a Vanderbilt’ or whatever,” Cooper said. “I didn’t think any good could come of it, personally or professionally. I really worked hard not to do anything that would associate me with that.”

Researching the family “was like opening a door and discovering this whole history that I consciously avoided knowing about,” he said.

The book is short of details on Cornelius Vanderbilt’s business success. Cooper figures there are other resources for that.

It wasn’t pretty. The patriarch played favorites with his sons and largely ignored his daughters, figuring they would get married and not carry on the Vanderbilt name.

“I certainly would not have wanted to have grown up in his house,” Cooper said. “But I admire that he did create new businesses — not just one empire but two empires. What he did was extraordinary, but it came at great cost to those around him.”

He believes he and his mother inherited something of the Commodore’s work ethic.

After his mother’s death, Cooper began to explore the journals, letters, documents and photos she left behind and, he wrote, “began to hear the voices of those people I never knew.”

Associated Press For much of his life, Anderson Cooper, shunned his lineage, but now with historian Katherine Howe, has written a book that explores the family’s complicated legacy.