If you love HBO’s The Gilded Age, meet the real people who lived it.
The remarkable true story of one family at the heart of America’s Gilded Age.
At the height of America's Gilded Age, James Lawrence Breese Sr. had everything.
Born into a prominent New York family, "Jimmie" Breese was an architect, Wall Street broker, and pioneering fine-art photographer whose life intertwined with presidents, industrialists, celebrated artists, and society's elite. From glittering mansions and exclusive salons to his infamous Carbon Studio, he seemed destined to leave an indelible mark on American history.
Then his carefully crafted world began to unravel.
But the Breese story did not end there.
As the old order crumbled, a new generation rejected privilege and forged a different legacy through engineering, aviation, and innovation. James Lawrence Breese Jr., disinherited for following his own path, rose through talent and determination to help make history as engineer of the U.S. Navy's NC-4—the first aircraft to successfully cross the Atlantic, years before Charles Lindbergh's celebrated flight.
Richly researched and vividly told, Gilded Breeze follows three generations of an extraordinary American family whose lives mirror the nation's transformation from Victorian excess to the Machine Age. Filled with larger-than-life personalities, forgotten pioneers, spectacular triumphs, and heartbreaking failures, this compelling work of narrative nonfiction reveals how one family's rise, fall, and redemption helped shape the birth of modern America.
