Expertly situating his subject's accomplishments in the context of late 18th- and early 19th-century commercial and geopolitical expansion, Madsen (Chanel; Gloria and Joe) weighs in with an absorbing biography of one of 19th-century America's most powerful men. Having immigrated to the U.S. from Germany in 1783, Astor was on friendly terms with such prominent figures as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Albert Gallatin by the time he came to dominate the North American fur trade in 1800. While Astor's relationships with Jefferson and others characterized the wheeling and dealing fledgling Washington, D.C., his mastery over the fur trade figured significantly in opening up the American West. The book's best moments come when Madsen describes Astor's efforts to establish a permanent outpost in the Oregon territory. Called Astor, it was designed not only to aid its founder's domination of the fur trade in the Northwest, but to help him facilitate trade with China - for while fur brought Astor his first fortune, foreign trade provided him with his second. While he had a talent for exploiting new business opportunities, Astor also had the foresight to extricate himself from both the fur and trading businesses before they waned. Astor's third fortune, the legacy he would pass on to his heirs, sprang from his real estate investments in Manhattan. He sank the profits from his first ventures into large swaths of land in rapidly expanding New York City, where he built mansions and tenements alike. Madsen provides a largely sympathetic portrait of Astor; while no revelations emerge, the book effectively projects his story against the backdrop of seminal events in early American history.
--Publishers Weekly

Like Caesar's Gaul, the continent of popular business biographies has lately been divided into three parts - let's call them Pittsburgh, Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
The Pittsburgh precinct is crowded with tales of the famous empire builders of the Gilded Age, the perennially interesting Morgans, Mellons and Rockefellers. The Wall Street region has produced a vast crop of books about various stock market geniuses. And Silicon Valley has become a fertile field for stories about famous young nerds and their favorite gadgets.
So it is refreshing to find a new business biography that returns to some long-neglected historical terrain: America's first generation of business titans. Long before there were Steel mills in Pittsburgh - indeed, before there was anything but Fort Duquesne in Pittsburgh - there were colorful American entrepreneurs who mobilized the capital, labor force and greed of the frontier to produce a new aristocracy of wealth to challenge the pedigrees of Europe.
And the most successful of them all, for those who use money to keep score, was John Jacob Astor. At the time of his death in 1848, at the age of 84, he was by far the richest man in America - indeed, he personally owned nearly 7 percent of all the personal wealth in the young country, far more than the young upstart Cornelius Vanderbilt. As recently as the early 20th century, the Astor name was still a widely recognized synonym for limitless wealth.
"John Jacob Astor: America's First Multimillionaire" by Axel Madsen (John Wiley Sons, $30) offers an overdue refresher course in the roots of what is still a formidable fortune. Born in what is now southern Germany in 1763, Astor was a bright, enterprising young man whose early schooling gave him a tantalizing glimpse of the world's possibilities. He reluctantly followed his father into the butcher's trade, but two older brothers struck out for London and New York. Soon, he followed - first, to England, and finally, in November 1783, to America.
He made his first fortune in the fur trade, and the men of his American Fur Company left their mark - and inevitably, their bruises - on the face of a barely explored North American wilderness. To help his fur trade with the Indians, he built a shipping empire, competing with the Boston Brahmins for a lucrative slice of the infamous opium trade with China.
Finally, he plowed his profits into real estate, buying and leasing out the bucolic farms and riverfront property that are now known as Midtown Manhattan. Astor left money for what became one of the founding collections of the New York City Public Library, but he was clearly no philanthropist-indeed, his offspring would be more famous for their conspicuous consumption than for their generosity.
His only grand edifice was the Astor Hotel, the city's first luxury lodging, but his name was appropriated by a community in Queens - Astoria - that could be seen from his country estate on the Manhattan shore of the East River.
This is Mr. Madsen's second purely business biography after more than a dozen works drawn from the stylish world of fashion and film. Unfortunately, Astor's life was singularly lacking in similar glamour. He was a primitive man whose written English was almost incomprehensible. His personal papers are sparse, and primary sources have been well-thumbed by earlier biographers - including Washington lrving, who
knew and briefly lived with Astor in the old trader's later years. None of Astor's offspring penned so much as a short anecdote about the man who paid the bills.
As a result, Astor's essential personality seems to elude his new biographer, leaving the reader with little more than the pelts and antlers, the deeds and mortgages of a life. Mr. Madsen moves these inanimate relics around with great energy but never truly makes them come alive.
The same cannot be said for Mr. Madsen's first foray into business biography, which has just been released in paperback. "The Deal Maker: How William C. Durant Made General Motors" (John Wiley Sons, $16.95) is a lively and fascinating account of a seminal figure in the history of the automobile industry.
Durant, born in 1861, did not invent the automobile, but he almost might be said to have invented the American idea of the automobile - that shimmering amalgamation of style, speed and sex appeal that remains the essence of car marketing.
He was a master salesman and a daring dreamer who, one friend said, was never happy unless he was clinging to a windowsill by his fingertips. His grand visions made conservative bankers like J. P. Morgan nervous. Nevertheless, before the 20th century was a decade old, Durant was able to pull together dozens of idiosyncratic car companies over an 18-month period to form the corporation that would dominate the
American auto industry for more than 50 years.
And then, like some magnificent figure from Greek mythology, he lost it all. He caught the stock market fever that broke out after World War 1. His frenzied speculations left him at the mercy of his biggest blue-chip investors, and they drove him from the G.M. boardroom in 1920.
He tried for a second act as a stock speculator, but was ruined in the 1929 crash. Again, he started over, finding some poignantly modest success late in life as manager of a bowling alley in Flint, Mich., where his fascinating journey had begun.
Durant's story is told with a confidence and passion that fully compensates for the occasional awkward phrasing and confusing chronology. Besides bringing the forgotten Durant to life, Mr. Madsen transforms familiar brands into real people, providing human faces for the proper nouns that Detroit has hardwired into our brains: Olds, Dodge, Buick, Chevrolet, Chrysler and even, for us old-timers, Nash and Studebaker.
"The Deal Maker" is a wonderful tale, well told.
--by Diana B.Henriques, NY Times

When he died a few months short of his eighty-fifth birthday, John Jacob Astor was the richest man in the United States. The fortune he left behind represented an astounding one-fifteenth of all personal wealth in America. Now, in this revelatory biography, bestselling author Axel Madsen deftly examines the private life of the first multinational entrepreneur of the New World.

Ruthless, tightfisted, but with an amazing gift for organizing business, Astor built an empire that spanned the commercial world of his time. From the end of the American Revolution to the mid-nineteenth century, Astor exhibited his flair for business and left a lasting impact on an emerging America. Astute and audacious, he became one of the first merchants to imagine the world as a global economy. And he had an uncanny knack for bolting out of businesses just before they went bust. He liquidated his China clippers just as tea from India and Japan cut into the tea trade; he dropped his fur interest just as fashion shifted and beavers and other furs became too scarce to be used in the emerging ready-made clothing industry. He then successfully converted his profits into Manhattan real estate.

Astor was a slumlord, a war profiteer, and a merciless jobber who shipped opium to China and sold liquor to Indians. He tricked President Thomas Jefferson into making an exception on the trade embargo against Britain and France for him and profited handsomely when James Madison blundered into the War of 1812.

John Jacob Astor tells the fascinating tale of this German-born son of a butcher who made his fortune in a new world where his money influenced public policy and led him to socialize with presidents and kings. This intriguing book features some of the most fascinating figures in the early history of the United States, including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Aaron Burr, and Washington Irving.

A thrilling account of this legendary figure and the harrowing cross-country expedition he financed in order to rule the rich western fur trade, John Jacob Astor weaves the story of the beginning of big business in America with Astor s life and, ultimately, reveals a man whose desire to reinvent himself reshaped the modern world.

On Stanwyck: The Life and Times of Barbara Stanwyck:
"Madsen s admirably researched, insightful portrait of her aloof nature . . . reveals she was always torn between her wish to give of herself and her need to be in control." Christian Science Monitor

On Chanel: A Woman of Her Own:
"Fascinating . . . . Takes the reader behind the coromandel veneers of Chanel s life." New York Times Book Review
"Carefully knits together the complex pattern of Chanel s complicated existence. It s not an easy task." Toronto Globe and Mail

On Gloria and Joe:
"Axel Madsen finally gives the public a fascinating chronicle of the romance that could have ruined more than two careers." Dallas Morning News

On Cousteau:
"Both critical and understanding. And it is exceptionally readable. Readers are well advised to take the plunge." Chicago Tribune

On Malraux:
"Will stand as the best of more than a dozen books about Malraux in print." Kansas City Star