Washington Post Book Reviews
For You
Tuesday January 25, 2011
|
A GLOBAL LIFE: My Journey among Rich and Poor, from Sydney to Wall Street to the World Bank
James D. Wolfensohn
Public Affairs
ISBN 978-1586482558
462 pages
$29.95
Reviewed by Simon Johnson
Early societies accorded disproportionate power and influence to priests -- look through the records of who was actually running a country, and you'll often find someone with a religious background. Over time, as economies became more complex, the landed aristocracy, wealthy merchants and industrialists held positions of prominence as ministers or top advisers to the ruler.
In the Soviet Union, engineers were central to power networks. We have bankers.
James Wolfensohn's autobiography, "A Global Life," provides a glimpse into why exactly bankers have become so powerful in modern American society. Wolfensohn is actually not the kind of banker with the most power today: The ones that brought the economy to its knees in 2008 suffered no consequences, and now tell the rest of us who and what we need to cut.
Wolfensohn never ran a commercial organization that was "too big to fail" -- although he apparently used such arguments in an attempt to get more subsidies for Chrysler during its rescue at the end of the 1970s. And he was never engaged in the aggressive and undercapitalized risk-taking that has characterized the last two decades -- he was out of Salomon Brothers in 1981 and out of his own boutique advisory business (and into the World Bank) in 1995.
Even at Salomon, Wolfensohn was an investment banker in the traditional sense, meaning that he put together old-fashioned corporate financing deals, not complicated "structured" products or anything directly related to trading.
Wolfensohn is a networker. Moving deliberately into worlds centered on wealth, first in Australia, then the United Kingdom, and always the United States, he cultivated people with his charm, courtesy and always the money. In his memoir, he is delicate and discreet to everyone -- even people who threatened his career or damaged his fortune are treated here with kid gloves.
There are a few exceptions: mostly Australians but also a few barbs for some British snobs who stood in his way and, at the very end of the book, some uncharacteristic but completely justified jabs at senior Bush administration officials, including Condoleezza Rice and even George W. Bush.
Mostly, though, Wolfensohn discusses his network of friends and relationships with the utmost care, presumably because, at age 77, he is still in the game. He is chasing something -- influence, prestige, being "a global player" -- and he is never done.
He wears his connections lightly in the first part of the book but makes a good deal more of them during his World Bank years.
Describing a meeting with President Clinton at the White House, to discuss whether he could become World Bank president, Wolfensohn presents his m.o. in a nutshell: "He and Hillary had visited our home in Jackson Hole during their summer vacation, and we had given him a birthday party at our house. But this was my first time in the inner sanctum, and my first meeting where there was a substantial issue to be discussed."
Wolfensohn is a major league name-dropper, and the reader grows weary at times. As the book tells it, he boosted his role as a networker by bringing his friends together with leading musicians. After funding a pair of budding impresarios in London in 1969, Wolfensohn befriended the Russian pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy, connected with a much wider range of up-and-coming (and famous) performers and bridged the worlds of music and finance ever after.
Wolfensohn made brilliant use of nonprofit board memberships to meet powerful people and build valuable network connections.
He chaired the board of Carnegie Hall and then the Kennedy Center. The book makes it sound as if in each case he actually ran the show, but this is implausible -- there are top-notch professional staffs at these places for a reason. He is just a bit too inclined at times to take all the credit.
The World Bank material takes up nearly 200 pages but really comes as an anti-climax. He is too much on his political guard, and there is nothing new here. His time at the Bank was fine, particularly his incessant wooing of nongovernmental organizations.
But the alleviation of poverty cannot be arranged as readily as musical events.
Wolfensohn was a banker to the rich and famous. He was not a Medici-type banker, using money to wield unvarnished power. And he was not a Sandy Weill-type banker, building a fragile financial behemoth based on delusions of grandeur. But he helped many members of our elite, and they helped him in return.
Simon Johnson is co-author of "13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown," just out in paperback.
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
|
| Comment on this Story | Printer Friendly | Share | Top |
THREE BOOKS ABOUT SHERLOCK HOLMES
NA
NA
ISBN NA
NA pages
$NA
Reviewed by Yvonne Zipp
Next to Mickey Mouse and Batman, he may have the world's most identifiable silhouette: deerstalker cap on head, pipe in mouth. Heck, ditch the hat and give him a nicotine patch, as in the terrific and updated BBC series, and Sherlock Holmes is still instantly recognizable. Agatha Christie sold an awful lot of books, but you don't see hordes of women wielding knitting needles descending on English villages to pretend that Miss Marple really exists (because that would just be silly). But Holmes fans are a breed apart. This winter, three new mysteries offer them a chance to pick up the magnifying glass once again. Certain conventions must be observed: Someone will say, "Elementary," and someone else will say "The game's afoot!"
1. "The Sherlockian" (Twelve, $24.99), by Graham Moore, opens with a man plotting murder near Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. It's 1893, and Arthur Conan Doyle is determined to rid himself of the man plaguing his life: Sherlock Holmes. But the main action of Moore's first novel takes place eight years later; it has to do with "the last great mystery of Arthur Conan Doyle" -- a missing journal covering the months just before he unexpectedly resurrected Holmes after sending his creation plummeting to his death over those falls. Flash forward to 2010: A man who claims to have found that lost journal is murdered at the annual Sherlock Holmes convention of the Baker Street Irregulars. The word "Elementary" is scrawled in blood at the scene. Who plans a murder like this? "Someone who's read way too many mysteries," an observer notes. The newest Irregular, Harold White, who wore his deerstalker to his college graduation and his first job interview, is determined to crack the case. A pretty reporter volunteers as Harold's Watson. (Moore, the son of Susan Sher, Michelle Obama's chief of staff, based "The Sherlockian" on the death of Holmes scholar Richard Lancelyn Green, who was found strangled in 2004 after claiming to have located papers missing from Conan Doyle's estate.)
The novel jumps between Harold's investigation and one in 1901, when Conan Doyle tries to solve the murder of a young woman with a three-headed crow tattooed on her leg. Bram Stoker, unable to interest the masses in "some bloodsucking count from the Continent," gets drafted as his reluctant Watson. The wrap-up is too abrupt, and the answer to the Edwardian mystery is deflating. But Moore's affection for the genre and his good-natured self-awareness ground what might otherwise have been a preposterous setup.
2. If "The Sherlockian" is determined to be a best-seller, "Baker Street Irregular"  (Arkham, $39.95), by Jon Lellenberg, is equally forceful about avoiding mainstream conventions. It's 1933, and lawyer K.W. "Woody" Hazelbaker is hired to unwind the varied business interests of a gangster named Owney Madden, who's looking to get out of town before Prohibition is repealed. Working for Madden turns out to be the making of young Hazelbaker, who has a taste for P.G. Wodehouse and Sherlock Holmes stories and is drafted into the newly founded Baker Street Irregulars.
With the rise of Hitler, Hazelbaker and the rest of the Irregulars find themselves longing to do something to help Great Britain, at which point Woody finds out that working for a crime boss has given him certain useful skills for dealing with both bureaucracy and international espionage. Lellenberg, who has edited collections of Holmes stories, is a Baker Street Irregular himself, and he knows his stuff. There are three-page speeches about Horatio at the Bridge, and the plot doesn't kick into gear until page 160. But the book offers a wealth of information for the obsessive Holmes fan and a satisfyingly noir ending.
3. In Steve Hockensmith's "World's Greatest Sleuth!" (Minotaur, $24.99), McClure's magazine commemorates the death of Sherlock Holmes with a competition at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Cowboy sleuths Otto "Big Red" and Gustav "Old Red" Amlingmeyer have been drafted into this detective contest. "My brother handles the deducifying in our little partnership, while recapitulations, banter, and walloping people are usually left to me," Otto explains. Gustav, a Holmes disciple, agrees reluctantly. That's before he sees the matching set of red and white chaps, vests and Stetsons the brothers are expected to wear in public. The contest turns serious when its designer is found face down, smothered in the Mammoth Cheese of Canada. There are probably critics made of sterner stuff who can resist dramatis personae that include "The Bearded Man," "The Other Other Bearded Man" and "Another Other Other Bearded Man," but I am not one of them. "World's Greatest Sleuth!" is a hoot.
Yvonne Zipp regularly reviews books for the Christian Science Monitor.
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
|
| Comment on this Story | Printer Friendly | Share | Top |
|
|
 |
| Recent Stories |
 THE PANIC VIRUS: A True Story of Medicine, Science and Fear
CLARA AND MR. TIFFANY
THREE BOOKS ABOUT THE COMING APOPCALYPSE
GEORGE W. BUSH AND THE REDEMPTIVE DREAM: A Psychological Portrait
THE BIG PAYBACK: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
