![]() Today, these fights continue – for migrant children and immigrant Dreamers, voting rights, women’s, and human rights – making Alva’s story important to tell. ![]() An activist for children, she later became one of America’s earliest suffragettes. She sought to become a prominent force in the early days of establishing Manhattan’s upper-crust. Strong-willed Alva Smith married a Vanderbilt for financial security not love. The novel is a captivating historical read. Except this time the woman is not known to us: Alva Vanderbilt, the wife of William Vanderbilt, one of Cornelius’ many grandchildren. Therese Anne Fowler captures the era and the family in her second novel (her debut, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald) about another compelling woman behind the man. ![]() As we reflect on the extremely wealthy today, what, if anything, they owe to us, it’s worthy to look back on what the richest American families in the late 1800s – the Gilded Age era, whose name came from a Mark Twain book, did for America.Ĭornelius (nicknamed The Commodore) Vanderbilt, was one of those families he built his fortune in steamboats and railroads. Illuminating the unsung Gilded Age legacy of socialite Alva Vanderbilt – philanthropist and activist for children’s, women’s, and civil rights (Manhattan and Newport, Rhode Island, 1874 – 1908): What Do Billionaires Owe the Rest of Us?was recently broadcast on NPR 1A, in response to the wealth tax plans proposed by some 2020 Democratic candidates. ![]()
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