“The House of Rothschild, Volume 2: The World's Banker, 1849–1999”, by Niall Ferguson

608 pages, Viking, ISBN13: 978-0670887941

Ferguson is not only publishing massive works of history at an astonishing rate; he is publishing well-written and controversial books. The Pity of War caused a stir by arguing that Britain bore the brunt of the blame for WWI. The completion of his two-volume history of the Rothschild banking empire begins at a high point of wealth, power and civic involvement, with Benjamin Disraeli a close family friend and Lionel Rothschild playing a leading role in gaining Jews the right to sit in Parliament. The book ends with the post-WWII rebuilding of the Rothschild's into a far-flung "mini-multinational". Drawing on thousands of letters from private Rothschild archives, Ferguson does a masterful job of showing how the Rothschild financial empire interacted with the governments of Europe. His account is peppered with countless refutations of previous interpretations and analyses. Yet the larger historical picture is often blurred as Ferguson furnishes blow-by-blow accounts of, for example, the French Rothschilds' ultimately successful decades-long battle against the Cr dit Mobilier. Readers will be left wanting more analysis of the larger sea change that consigned the Rothschild style of private banking to its current secondary status. And while he follows the senior partners in Britain and France (other houses, in Naples, Vienna and Frankfurt, either closed or simply receded from Ferguson's view), Ferguson sticks to their public deeds and roles, rarely venturing into the personal or the psychological. Still, this history is teeming with soundly argued expositions on the role of a singularly important family.

“The House of Rothschild, Volume 1: Money's Prophets, 1798–1848”, by Niall Ferguson

688 pages, Viking, ISBN13: 978-0670857685

The first historian with access to the long-lost Rothschild archive, bestselling author Niall Ferguson offers a myth-breaking in-depth portrait of one of the most fascinating and powerful families in Europe in The House of Rothschild, Volume 1: Money's Prophets, 1798–1848. Hidden for nearly 50 years in the KGB's special archive, the uncovered records cast new light on the banking family's rise to preeminence. With the help of Hebrew scholar Mordecai Zucker, The House of Rothschild also reflects the first major translation of important and revealing intrafamily correspondence in the Judendeutch dialect. In a vast undertaking, Ferguson has synthesized material from over 20 different archives and 20,000 letters, as well as other historical sources, and produced an exceptional (and readable history). Ferguson follows the founders' five sons in their rise to power as pioneers of modern business communication, creators of the international bond market, and the financial force behind many political events of the time. A family saga as well, Ferguson reveals the true nature of the family's relations with one another and with most of the important politicians and monarchs of the time, as well as their profound connection to the Jewish community. A major book, "The House of Rothschild" is the definitive account of one of the most important firms (and one of the most exceptional families) in modern history.

“Ex-Friends: Falling Out with Allen Ginsburg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt and Norman Mailer”, by Norman Podhoretz

256 pages, Pocket Books, ISBN-13: 978-0684855943

Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer, all are ex-friends of Norman Podhoretz, the renowned editor and critic and leading member of the group of New York intellectuals who came to be known as “The Family”. As only a family member could, Podhoretz tells the story of these friendships – once central to his life – and shows how the political and cultural struggles of the past 50 years made them impossible to sustain. With wit, piercing insight, and startling honesty, we are introduced as never before to a type of person for whom ideas were often matters of life and death, and whose passing from the scene has left so large a gap in American culture. Podhoretz was the trailblazer of the now-famous journey of a number of his fellow intellectuals from radicalism to conservatism, a journey through which they came to exercise both cultural and political influence far beyond their number. With this fascinating account of his once happy and finally troubled relations with these cultural icons, Podhoretz helps us understand why that journey was undertaken and just how consequential it became. In the process we get a brilliantly illuminating picture of the writers and intellectuals who have done so much to shape our world.

Combining a personal memoir with literary, social, and political history, this unique gallery of stern and affectionate portraits is as entertaining as a novel and at the same time more instructive about postwar American culture than a formal scholarly study. Interwoven with these tales of some of the most quixotic and scintillating of contemporary American thinkers are themes that are introduced, developed, and redeveloped in a variety of contexts, with each appearance enriching the others, like a fugue in music. It is all here: the perversity of brilliance; the misuse of the mind; the benightedness of people usually considered especially enlightened; their human foibles and Olympian detachment; the rigors to be endured and the prizes to be won and the prices to be paid for the reflective life.

Most people live their lives in a very different way, and at one point, in a defiantly provocative defense of the indifference shown to the things by which intellectuals are obsessed, Norman Podhoretz says that Socrates' assertion that the unexamined life was not worth living was one of the biggest lies ever propagated by a philosopher. And yet, one comes away from Ex-Friends feeling wistful for a day when ideas really mattered and when there were people around who cared more deeply about them than about anything else. Reading of a time when the finest minds of a generation regularly gathered in New York living rooms to debate one another with articulateness, passion, and a level of erudition almost extinct, we come to realize how enviable it can be to live a life as poignantly and purposefully examined as Norman Podhoretz's is in Ex-Friends.