Need to Read: Dead End Gene Pool

Wendy Burden, great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt — once the richest man in America — grew up straddling two worlds: that of her überwealthy paternal grandparents and that of her mother, a reluctant parent more interested in jet-setting than raising Wendy and her brothers. (Burden's father committed suicide when she was 6.) What started off as a cookbook morphed into a dishy, tragicomic memoir.

MC: You're brutally honest in your depiction of your eccentric family — from your grandmother's gastrointestinal issues to rampant family alcoholism. How did they react to it?

WB: When I was writing, I didn't think about who would read it. But then my youngest brother got ahold of an early copy and pony-expressed it to everyone. He isn't speaking to me now, though we do text. He thinks much of it is inaccurate. My other brother was full of grace about it — he read what he wanted, and not the rest. Part of me thinks, You should be glad I left out some of the worst stuff!