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Award-winning author and journalist Anderson Cooper has spent his career documenting the lives of others. But in “Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty,” the CNN news anchor turns inward to chronicle his own well-known family.

His new book, out today (and already a #1 Bestseller on Amazon), explores the story of the Vanderbilts, one of the wealthiest families in American history, whose fortune began with Cooper’s great-great-great grandfather Cornelius Vanderbilt. The years that followed the tycoon’s death in 1877 tell a tale of familial discord as heirs fought over his grand fortune, and subsequent generations found ways make even more money.

Cooper joins historian Katherine Howe in the extensive biography,...