Description
Gentlemen Bankers focuses on the social and economic circles of one of America’s most renowned and influential financiers, J. P. Morgan, to tell a closely focused story of how economic and political interests intersected with personal rivalries and friendships among the Wall Street aristocracy during the first half of the twentieth century.
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Susie J. Pak (history, St. John's U.) has written volume 51 in Harvard Studies in Business History, a profile of the banking world of J.P. Morgan and his colleagues. The book offers the enjoyable prose and story of good creative nonfiction with the excellent research of good scholarly history. Even readers without interest in finance will find it worthwhile. Students and scholars of US history, and readers interested in finance, politics, or minority experience will value the author's focus. Pak looks at how personal bankers conducted business in a private circle of contacts, which was rigidly separated from the public sphere of firms, governments, and popular opinion, in spite of the fact that the banker's personal business was the same as the firm's professional business. In these complex webs, who was or was not admissible to the private circle of gentlemen was a huge question. So was the public question of who the firm would do business with. Some groups (African American Harvard alumni, the general public) were simply excluded. Others (patrician women) were enmeshed in the personal networks, which gave them access but made it difficult for them to change anything. Still others (Jewish bankers, Japanese officials) could use the system because they were accepted in one realm and excluded from the other. The book focuses most closely on how Jewish and gentile banking firms were able to be public colleagues in an anti-Semitic system because their private circles were totally segregated. Pak also documents many other cases involving many other groups. The author is tracing the untold history of networks; the practical ways individuals and small groups manage the rules of social identity to achieve large goals. Her concluding chapter is on writing this type of history. There are extensive endnotes. Because of its general interest topic, clear focus on the documentable facts of financial and social history, and very fine writing style, the book will appeal to a wide range of scholarly and general readers. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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