Once upon a time, the Rothschilds were the wealthiest people on earth. In a thorough, diligent study, Ferguson (History/Oxford) completes his grand chronicle of the family that achieved history’s greatest economic hegemony (The House of Rothschild: Money’s Prophets, 1798-1848, 1998). Access to family records, hitherto unavailable, was facilitated by the English branch of the clan for this monumental authorized history. Ferguson makes their engrossing story an advanced seminar on the financial history of Europe. In their heyday, the Rothschilds practiced geopolitics on a grand scale. They arranged the tricky reparations following the Franco-Prussian conflict, were active in securing Suez for Victoria, and managed assets for the Vatican. Contrary to myth, they were generally pacifists. (War tended to disrupt markets as well as harm people)., “While others unified nations, the Rothschilds were quietly unifying Europe,” using railroads as a binding factor. They demolished social barriers erected against Jews, hobnobbing easily with aristocracy and royalty, dealing with the likes of Disraeli and Gladstone, Lloyd George and Cecil Rhodes, Napoleon III and Bismarck. They ultimately joined the nobility themselves, purchasing castles and art in prodigious quantities. By the turn of the last century and the advent of the fifth generation, however, there was a decline in the Rothschilds’ fortunes. They had neglected to establish a foothold in the New World. Power was dispersed among numerous, often effete, cousins. There were marriages outside the endogamous family, eventually even outside its religion. Some partners cashed out to go their own ways. Virulent anti-Semitism and two world wars left the family enterprises no more important than those of their numerous competitors. The text has a pronounced British accent, as the English house is given primacy. (Values are uniformly reported in pounds sterling). Not History for Dummies. Copious financial accounts are combined with political and social narrative to produce a formidable chronicle. It is an extraordinary tale of the unique commercial underwriters of European history, told with impressive scholarship.
Pub Date: Nov. 8, 1999
ISBN: 0-670-88794-3
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1999
An easy reading book of supportive encouragement to follow one’s dreams.
More than 40 career-changers tell their stories.
Introduced by Facebook executive and founder of Leanin.org Sheryl Sandberg, Lewis’ second cousin, the book offers exuberant advice for people who want to make a leap—daring or modest—from one career path to another, just as he did. At the age of 24, working for the investment firm Bain Capital, the author felt restless and dissatisfied. “I began to realize,” he writes, “that I wanted this life mostly because I thought I should,” but he heard “a very distinct if faint voice” urging him to try something “very different.” As he considered following his passion to become a professional squash player, Lewis sought advice from others who made similar jumps: a banker-turned-cyclist, for example, and a journalist-turned-politician. From them, and the others whose stories fill the book, he came up with the idea of the Jump Curve, a process of four key phases: listening to your inner voice, making a practical plan, believing in your own good luck, and rejecting regret. “You will come out stronger,” Lewis insists, even if your initial plan fails. “I keep coming back to the idea of agency,” said a man who made a move from corporate hospitality service to restaurant ownership: “the difference between life happening to you versus you making life happen.” Among the individuals profiled are a nurse who, at the age of 50, became a doctor; a football player–turned-writer; an investment professional who became coxswain of the U.S. Paralympic Rowing Team; a PR executive who found her calling as an Episcopal bishop; and a lawyer who sued the New York fire department to admit women firefighters—and then became the first woman hired. “Harassment, discrimination, death threats,” and physical abuse dogged her 25-year career. But, she says, “this was a jump worth fighting for,” a sentiment that Lewis underscores. Changing careers is risky, but “there is a risk to not taking a jump at all.”
An easy reading book of supportive encouragement to follow one’s dreams.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-12421-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
Essential reading for citizens of the here and now. Other economists should marvel at how that plain language can be put to...
A French academic serves up a long, rigorous critique, dense with historical data, of American-style predatory capitalism—and offers remedies that Karl Marx might applaud.
Economist Piketty considers capital, in the monetary sense, from the vantage of what he considers the capital of the world, namely Paris; at times, his discussions of how capital works, and especially public capital, befit Locke-ian France and not Hobbesian America, a source of some controversy in the wide discussion surrounding his book. At heart, though, his argument turns on well-founded economic principles, notably r > g, meaning that the “rate of return on capital significantly exceeds the growth rate of the economy,” in Piketty’s gloss. It logically follows that when such conditions prevail, then wealth will accumulate in a few hands faster than it can be broadly distributed. By the author’s reckoning, the United States is one of the leading nations in the “high inequality” camp, though it was not always so. In the colonial era, Piketty likens the inequality quotient in New England to be about that of Scandinavia today, with few abject poor and few mega-rich. The difference is that the rich now—who are mostly the “supermanagers” of business rather than the “superstars” of sports and entertainment—have surrounded themselves with political shields that keep them safe from the specter of paying more in taxes and adding to the fund of public wealth. The author’s data is unassailable. His policy recommendations are considerably more controversial, including his call for a global tax on wealth. From start to finish, the discussion is written in plainspoken prose that, though punctuated by formulas, also draws on a wide range of cultural references.
Essential reading for citizens of the here and now. Other economists should marvel at how that plain language can be put to work explaining the most complex of ideas, foremost among them the fact that economic inequality is at an all-time high—and is only bound to grow worse.Pub Date: March 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-674-43000-6
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Belknap/Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
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