Publishers Weekly
★ 09/11/2023
Biographer Schulman (Sons of Wichita) delivers an ambitious and captivating group portrait of Jewish financial dynasties “with profound legacies” in the U.S. from the 1830s to the present. Delving into the genealogy of prominent “members of a close-knit German-Jewish aristocracy of New York,” Schulman describes how the nation’s unregulated “fledgling financial system” during the Civil War created an opportunity for these immigrants to rise from peddlers to Wall Street moguls. In addition to providing in-depth profiles of well-known families like Goldman, Sachs, Guggenheim, and Lehman, he spotlights Jacob H. Schiff, the “greatest Jewish philanthropist of the 20th century.” An early head of Kuhn Loeb (a major investment bank until the 1980s), Schiff was dubbed the “Little Giant” after he “plunged” the company into the railroad business. Already successful when he joined the firm in 1875, Schiff built Montefiore Hospital, funded both the Henry Street Settlement and Barnard College, and brought Russian Jews to the U.S. during the pogroms. Schulman presents a wealth of fascinating detail (the blockade-running Lehman brothers supplied the Confederate army with black-market cotton) and details how, despite their status, these financial titans faced antisemitism. Full of vivid personalities and intriguing tales of alliances and rivalries, this is a sensitive and compassionate portrait of the families that built Wall Street. (Nov.)
From the Publisher
"Schulman offers a rich account of [the modern financial] system, and of his subjects' role in shaping it . . . He anchors his narrative in intimate personal details, creating a compelling portrait of a close-knit Gilded Age aristocracy, which, though its members possessed nearly infinite wealth, was locked out of many of the country’s élite institutions. Schulman doesn't shy away from the unsavory, rendering his subjects with satisfying complexity." —The New Yorker
"Stellar . . . [A] wonderful book . . . A striking portrait of how Jews, and specifically these most elite Jews, set out to determine what it meant to be Jewish in America . . . Rich in both historical detail and as a character study, and readers will come away with a newfound appreciation for the heft of the legacy of these men, and a realization of how bittersweet that legacy is." —Emily Tamkin, The Washington Post
“A sprawling history of the German Jews who came to the United States in the 19th century and helped create the modern economy while navigating their own identities as Jews, bankers and Americans . . . Schulman is a thorough reporter with an eye for delightful details.” —Jacob Goldstein, The New York Times Book Review
“An illuminating group portrait . . . Schulman’s tale begins with pushcart peddlers in the1830s who rose within a generation to become titans of finance . . . With U.S. campuses today being shaken by anti-Israel demonstrations and American Jews fearing a renewed antisemitism, The Money Kings sounds a disquieting and timely note . . . The plight of Schiff and his peers will surely echo with American Jews today, suddenly feeling their standing fragile again.” —Roger Lowenstein, The Wall Street Journal
“A deeply reported and readable chronicle of a group of German-Jewish immigrants who arrived in the US in the 1800s and earned fortunes that lasted generations. Schulman vividly portrays their profound impact on Wall Street and the world . . . A timely corrective to historical distortions that have helped feed antisemitism.” —Joshua Franklin, Financial Times
"A well-researched economic history of the foundations of Jewish wealth and philanthropy in America . . . Schulman seasons his account with entertaining anecdotes [and] is alert to themes that resonate today . . . While it’s [Jacob] Schiff who stands out, he’s well situated in the context of his network, so the reader gleans a fuller picture of turn-of-the-century American Jewish life and is shown a robust study of late nineteenth century, early twentieth century American financial history." —Bettina Berch, Jewish Book Council
“Not merely an engaging account of the lifestyles of the rich and famous—although that part of the story is unavoidable—but, more importantly, a history of how a handful of industrious immigrants were able to have such an outsized impact on both America and American Jewry . . . Today’s battles over immigration, antisemitism, and even US-Russia relations are also amply represented in the era under Schulman’s scrutiny.” —Rafael Medoff, New York Post
"Full of illuminating information about Americans’ attitudes toward Jews . . . Tells the not always well-known stories of these men, their families, and their impact on modern corporate finance, IPOs, anti-trust legislation, the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank, philanthropy, Jewish life in the United States, Zionism, and antisemitic conspiracy theories . . . Daniel Schulman has brought [Jacob Schiff] back to life." —Glenn C. Altschuler, The Jerusalem Post
"An ambitious and captivating group portrait of Jewish financial dynasties 'with profound legacies' in the U.S. from the 1830s to the present . . . Schulman presents a wealth of fascinating detail . . . Full of vivid personalities and intriguing tales of alliances and rivalries, this is a sensitive and compassionate portrait of the families that built Wall Street." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A spirited account of the first great American financiers, many of them German Jewish immigrants, [and] a welcome, highly readable contribution to American financial and social history." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“With The Money Kings, Daniel Schulman becomes our foremost historian of the American business dynasty. The story behind Goldman Sachs and other famed financial institutions takes readers to unexpected places: not just Wall Street, but Germany and Alabama, the Middle East and the Lower East Side. Schulman contends with both the good and evil that concentrated wealth can thrust upon the world—all without losing sight of the human tales behind the creation of modern finance.” —Beverly Gage, author of G-Man (winner of the Pulitzer Prize)
“The Money Kings is more than just a riveting unraveling of the history of high finance in America. It gives voice to the Jewish peddlers who remade Wall Street, debunks antisemitic conspiracy theories, and offers inspiration to new generations of big-dreaming immigrants.” —Larry Tye, author of Demagogue
“The origin stories of America’s great Jewish banking families—among them, the Lehmans, the Schiffs, the Goldmans, and the Seligmans—have always been shrouded in some mystery. But no longer. Thanks to Daniel Schulman’s endlessly riveting and triumphant Money Kings, the fascinating details of how these determined men made their marks and their fortunes on Wall Street are revealed, many for the very first time.” —William D. Cohan, author of Power Failure
“Daniel Schulman’s fascinating book tells the story of not one but two Jewish communities in New York more than a century ago. The relationship between them—the wealthy uptown elite and the poor downtown immigrants—makes this an absorbing tale.” —Adam Hochschild, author of American Midnight
“A must-read for anyone seeking to gain a deeper understanding of the roots of modern finance and its foundational families. Schulman weaves a masterful tapestry of history, bringing to life the untold stories of a group of trailblazing pioneers who left an indelible mark on global business and Jewish life. It’s a monumental work.” —David de Jong, author of Nazi Billionaires
DECEMBER 2023 - AudioFile
As a financial history chronicling the role of Jewish immigrants in America's evolving financial markets between the Civil War and WWI, this audiobook may be of limited interest. Jonathan Davis is skilled and effective, and the narrative is well researched. But what makes this story so compelling, and so relevant to today's events, is the historical link between Wall Street and anti-Semitism. Davis's steady narration is a virtue as he delves into the origins and evolution of many ingrained prejudices. Often these are based on assumptions and misunderstandings; for example, during WWI Jewish financiers were particularly suspect because most of them had German accents. The insights offered here are provocative and highly illuminating. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2023-09-15
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.
