A welcome, highly readable contribution to American financial and social history.
Spirited account of the first great American financiers, many of them German Jewish immigrants.
Lehman, Goldman, and Sachs are well-known names, writes Schulman, deputy Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones and author of the Koch family biography Sons of Wichita. Less well known are the American Warburgs and the Seligmans, but all built the nation’s first modern banking system. Many of these families first landed in the South. Henry Lehman, for example, was born in Bavaria but moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where he traded in that most valuable regional commodity, cotton. The need to establish a northern entrepôt brought some of the Lehman brothers to New York, “the nation’s financial capital” and “primary shipping link to European ports such as Liverpool, through which much of Britain’s cotton imports from the United States passed.” (So extensive was their network that it contributed to Ulysses S. Grant’s later-reversed, infamous order that Jews be expelled from the vast military district under his command.) Building family dynasties through intermarriage, Lehman and other Jewish entrepreneurs found opportunity in the post–Civil War need for financing through bonds. The deployment of the transatlantic telegraph cable soon internationalized the American market, requiring banking and trading services. Though Schulman is keenly aware of how antisemitic tropes have arisen from the financiers’ activities—which gave birth, he notes, to “the first American-Jewish lobby”—he points to plenty of gentiles who took the lead, including the Morgans, Harrimans, and Rockefellers. Many of their firms thrived for more than a century. However, as the author points out in this wide-ranging history, “Of the mighty German-Jewish financial houses that had defined an epoch of American finance, only Goldman Sachs, which waited until 1999 to go public, survived…to become the world’s preeminent investment bank.”
A welcome, highly readable contribution to American financial and social history.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9780451493545
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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