Our Crowd

Our Crowd, The Greatest Jewish Families of New York by Stephen Birmingham -- Guggenheims, Loebs, Lehmans, Schiffs -- a lot of the names that were synonymous with big money finance in the 19th and 20th centuries are the subject of this book. Its about big money, big family, big society. It traces a lot of these families from the old country through their struggles as new immigrants. The founders of these dynasties, almost exclusively, started penniless. They went initially in to fields where you could started with little or no money -- they were peddlers and junk men. They started far away from the financial centers in New York in places like St. Louis and Birmingham. As they made a little money, they'd move up -- from the goods they could carry on their back they'd earn enough money to buy a horse and wagon. From there, enough to buy a small store.

Eventually, these early pioneers learned that dealing more purely in money -- loans, bonds, stocks -- could make them wealthy. They secured their wealth for the first hundred years or more by keeping the new companies -- Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and others -- in the family. They brought brothers over from the Europe and made them partners. As time went on they added their sons to the rosters.

Once they became wealthy, the book describes how they spent and gave away their money. Some of these families gave away $40-100 million in the late 19th and early 20th century -- a huge amount of money. They also learned to spend -- throwing amazing parties and buying incredible art collections, while still remaining excluded from the gentile high society of people like Morgan and Astor.

The book itself is a little slow at times, but, especially if you're interested in finance, a fascinating read. Its part of a series called "Classic Bestsellers" that is reprinting books that were popular decades ago, so its a little disconcerting to have the book take the perspective of the 60s when it was written. The book concludes before the rash of Wall Street mergers that have taken place in the last few decades so the story is incomplete.