New York’s Hotel Netherland, owned by William Waldorf Astor. Photo: Bettmann ArchiveIn 1981, when Anderson Cooper was 13, he joined his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, for lunch at Mortimer’s on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. There she introduced him to a “very small lady in a very big fur coat” who swept in and sat down at the next table. It was Brooke Astor, the doyenne of New York society. Looking at the “delicate, well-groomed woman about to enjoy a delicate, well-groomed lunch,” Mr. Cooper writes that he was unaware at the time of the “brutality” at the heart of her inherited wealth.

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Persons: William Waldorf Astor, Anderson Cooper, Gloria Vanderbilt, Brooke Astor, ” Mr, Cooper, ” Organizations: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Public Locations: Netherland, Mortimer’s, New York