JUMP ON THE TRAIN

Rosengarten shares the ups and downs of his entrepreneurial career in this memoir.

They say if you can make it in New York City, you can make it anywhere—but doing so in the tumultuous era of John Lindsay’s mayoral administration during the late 1960s and early ’70s was especially difficult. The author’s background, which includes bipolar disorder, electroshock therapy, dyslexia, and no college degree, made things even more challenging, but he persevered and found outlets for his creativity in a series of entrepreneurial projects. His greatest claim to fame is the leisure suit, which he created in 1971; the genesis of this era-defining fashionwear was a knit fabric he found on the racks at the textile mill where we worked. The leisure suit changed the men’s fashion industry seemingly overnight, appearing on theTonight Show and in the pages of GQ. “You wouldn’t wear a regular suit in a restaurant or at a party,” Rosengarten writes. “That was for the ‘squares.’” Its meteoric rise and precipitous fall are documented here, as are the author’s lesser-known projects, such as the Rainbow Reader: colored screens that aimed to help people with dyslexia to read with greater ease. Each chapter tells a singular entrepreneurial story, related in a straightforward manner without rancor or score-settling: “Feel free to enjoy them in sequential order or by which interests you most,” the author recommends. The prose isn’t as inspired as Rosengarten’s projects, such as his forays into real estate, which included converting empty industrial buildings into lofts and building the Bowery Hotel, “an iconic New York City destination for A-List celebrities, real New Yorkers, and tourists,” and a Long Island–based solar farm that reflected his newfound “environmental-based goals.” However, the author’s story may inspire budding or even experienced entrepreneurs, as along with his successes, he had several projects go bust: “You can learn from both the good and the bad,” he writes. “It all just makes you stronger.”

An encouraging remembrance with an emphasis on lessons learned.