Solid storytelling brought to bear on a dusty corner of financial history.
In which a proto-yuppie out of a Tarkington novel gets his comeuppance—sort of.
James Hazen Hyde, writes journalist Beard (Good Daughters, 1999, etc.), had it all: charm, good looks, and lots and lots of money. By his late 20s, bottom-feeding in a Wall Street run by the likes of J.P. Morgan, Alfred Vanderbilt, and E.H. Harriman, he had become a senior officer in the Equitable Life Assurance Society and a director of no fewer than 46 companies, all of which netted him an income so vast that he was able, in the early 1900s, to pay an annual upkeep on a mansion in the neighborhood of $100,000, complete with a huge collection of carriages and other toys. Just as perp-walked executives of today insist that they came by their fortunes honestly and poor accounting was to blame for company woes, Hyde protested his own straight-upness when, in the wake of a lavish party he threw in 1905, his comfortable world dissolved in a vast scandal; when the books were finally balanced, it was revealed that millions had gone missing, including $7 million alone in the mysterious category “for other disbursements.” Hyde high-tailed it to Europe, marrying well and producing a son who became a leading figure in the Cold War intelligence community. In his later years, clad in a cape and spats, the statute of limitations presumably up, he could be seen wandering the streets of New York; he made for good gossip, “and if he was an odd duck,” Beard writes, “he was also a sophisticated, entertaining, fascinating dinner partner.” Was he the Ken Lay of his time? The evidence is spotty, but Beard depcits well the Gilded Age and its spectacular excesses—and in an age of corporate scandal, it’s comforting somehow to know that legions of the crooked have gone before us.
Solid storytelling brought to bear on a dusty corner of financial history.Pub Date: July 4, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-019939-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2003
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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