The Eccentric Billionaire

By Nancy Kriplen
(Amacom, 224 pages, $24)

Commodore
By Edward J. Renehan Jr.
(Basic Books, 364 pages, $28)

One of the unfortunate achievements of the current president and the recently unseated congressional majority is the gradual disappearance of the inheritance tax, which many Republicans (and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal) have taken to calling the death tax. The term is intended to conjure up horrific images of a greedy and intrusive Uncle Sam—a government that dispatches briefcase-toting tax collectors to the deathbeds of entrepreneurs, the better to wrest them from their chambers and force them to settle with the I.R.S. before allowing them to share a private final moment with their descendants.

That the phrase is founded on a lie should be self-evident: It is neither the dying nor the dead who pay the tax but those who inherit their estates. This, however, has not quieted the demand from conservative millionaires like Mitt Romney (no doubt egged on by his 10 fortunate grandchildren) that the estate tax finally be abolished.

Two books shine a light, albeit inadvertently, on how the estate tax has worked to the United States' advantage. Each is a biography of a famously successful mogul. One is Cornelius Vanderbilt, the 19th-century riverboat captain turned railroad baron. The other is John D. MacArthur, a 20th-century insurance tycoon.

Both books present even the stalwart fan of the genre with serious challenges. Commodore, by Edward J. Renehan Jr., is a ponderous account of every ferryboat that Vanderbilt built, every rival he bested, and every (or nearly every) whore that he bedded. The architect of the New York Central Railroad and the creator of the original Grand Central Terminal in New York City is certainly worthy of a biography, and at 364 pages, Commodore is not overly long; it only seems so.