Helpful Score: 2
This book was funny! Wendy Burden tells about her childhood growing up the great-great-granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Her stories run everywhere from an obsession with Wednesday Addams, her discovery that a member of her grandparents' staff was actually Santa Claus, and her younger brother's insistence that he was the reincarnation of their father. Burden has a sense of humor about growing up in a family with too much money, which made this book a lot of fun to read.
Helpful Score: 1
Fun read Little Rich Girl stuff but a bit kinkier. She is a Vanderbilt. So is Anderson Cooper but he writes better. Still, it makes you laugh and isn't heavy.
Helpful Score: 1
This book is a bit like the train wreck you can't take your eyes off. It certainly demonstrates that even extreme wealth cannot make everything better. On some pages, it is fascinating (like active monkeys at the zoo) - the rich really do live differently. But the book shows a striking dichotomy of life that The author lived. When with her uber-rich paternal grandparents, she had access to the life of luxury, but when she was with her mother at home - they often lived (in later years) in near squalor. The thread that runs through both sides of the family is alcoholism (and other substance abuse). Like other reviewers, I wish more family photos had been included. It is a great fast read when you need something truly different to shake things up.
