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Reading Wednesday
Sep. 14th, 2016 05:00 pmWhat did you just finish?
Prince of Darkness: The Untold Story of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, Wall Street's First Black Millionaire by Shane White. An excellent nonfiction book about Jeremiah Hamilton, a historical figure who is sadly barely known these days but was a New York City celebrity in the 1830s to 50s. White is very upfront about the fact that he had little material to work with; no one preserved Hamilton's letters, diaries, business books, etc, and so White is restricted to mentions of Hamilton from newspapers and court cases. Luckily Hamilton made frequent appearances in both. And yet despite this limitation, the story White managed to write is extremely thorough and detailed. I was impressed.
Nonetheless there are unanswered questions. Hamilton, at various points in his life, claimed to be from Virginia, Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico, other spots in the Caribbean, and even – once! – from India. What we do know is that he made a fortune in the early stock market, not once but twice, losing the first in the Panic of 1837. He dabbled in real estate, investments, insurance, railroads, factories, and more or less all possible money-making ventures. He was certainly a shady businessman (he first appears in the historical record attempting to smuggle counterfeit money into Haiti, and was involved in so many insurance scams that the various insurance companies of NYC eventually banded together and put a lifelong ban on offering any insurance to any project that involved Hamilton), but White points out that such behavior was hardly unusual, and John Jacob Astor and Cornelius Vanderbuilt – other NYC millionaires of the time – did the same.
It's such behavior, though, that seems to have gotten him largely ignored by the black community; the one mention of him in Frederick Douglass' Paper, a black newspaper, is not exactly complimentary: "Compare Sam Ward [an antislavery activist] with the only black millionaire in New York, I mean Jerry Hamilton; and it is plain that manhood is a 'nobler ideal' than money. [...] [Hamilton] has fled from his identity like a dog with a tin kettle tied to his tail!" Hamilton certainly seems to been a con artist, but it's unfortunate that this distaste for his principles contributed to his disappearance from modern awareness. Because even if Hamilton was an asshole, his mere existence is incredible. As White points out when Hamilton demanded bribes in exchange for giving out stock tips: "It is worth pausing at this point to consider this moment in the city's history. Three years into a Civil War of almost unimaginable carnage in which the central issue was the existence of racial slavery, less than twelve months after the Draft Riots, New York's own cataclysm, in which the mutilated bodies of African Americans were hanged from lampposts, an unapologetic wealthy black man let it be known that he was willing to receive cigars and champagne – mind you, only the very best – as acknowledgement of his "kindness". In order to gain privileged access to this African American's wisdom about the market prospects of listed corporations, modern entities beyond most Americans' understanding, that were laying thousands of miles of railroad track and steaming huge iron vessels across oceans, some white New Yorkers were willing almost to grovel. [... Hamilton's] chutzpah was remarkable."
The book doesn't limit itself to Hamilton's biography. It's a fantastic history of New York City from 1820-60 in general, covering topics like early Wall Street; the Great Fire of 1835 which burned most of downtown Manhattan; the ending of slavery in New York, the Draft Riots, and early Jim Crow laws, including segregation on the commuter rails; early newspapers – Hamilton was close friends with Benjamin Day, founder of the New York Sun; Thomas Downing, another rich black New Yorker, the owner of an oyster restaurant on Wall Street; the Five Points slum; and more.
It's a really excellent book, chock-full of fascinating trivia and tied together by an author who is in sure control of his material. Highly recommended.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Soframiz: Vibrant Middle Eastern Recipes from Sofra Bakery and Cafe by Ana Sortun, Maura Kilpatrick. A cookbook that I was interested in because I once spent time in Syria and Oman, and I was hoping to recreate some of the things I ate there. Unfortunately this book leans heavily on the baking and is light on the cooking – nothing wrong with baking, I just find it personally less appealing.
Many of the recipes here are extremely fiddly and precise; I'd much rather visit the actual Soframiz bakery than try to replicate them myself. Unfortunately it's in Boston, so I won't actually be doing that any time soon. But there were some recipes here that looked good. I have taken particular note of "Persian-Style Carrots and Black-Eyed Peas", their version of shakshuka, and "Whipped Feta with Sweet and Hot Peppers". Yum.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Mucho Mojo by Joe Lansdale. The second book in the Hap & Leonard series, which I started reading at the end and am only now going back to read the early books. Hap is an ex-hippie, liberal white trash, and Leonard is a black gay Vietnam vet Republican. Despite this, they are best friends in rural East Texas, where they alternatively solve mysteries and get caught up in thriller/suspense action scenes.
In this book, Leonard's Uncle Chester has died and left all of his belongings, including a house, to Leonard. Chester played an important part in raising Leonard, but disowned him when Leonard came out as gay, and they therefore had not spoken in decades. That complication is added to the fact that Chester died of Alzheimer's, and so the belongings he left behind are confusing and mysterious: boxes of expired coupons, a key to nothing, a painting of an old house, geometric doodles, a copy of a library book.
Leonard and Hap move into Chester's house with the intention of renovating it before trying to sell. In the process of replacing some floorboards, they discover a mysterious trunk buried beneath the house, which proves to contain the skeleton of a young boy and dozens of child porn magazines. The police, of course, assume that Chester was the murderer. Leonard becomes convinced that Chester was actually trying to catch the real killer, but was hampered by a local police department that was willing to turn a blind eye to missing children when they were all poor and black. Leonard and Hap take it upon themselves to renew Chester's investigation, figure out the clues he left behind, and catch the murderer before the next child disappears – all while hampered by continued suspicion that Chester might have been the guilty party after all.
I find that the second book in mystery series can often be weak. In the first book, the characters and setting are specifically designed to be foils to the mystery: in Savage Season, the clash of idealism vs cynicism in Hap and Leonard's contradictory outlooks is the perfect reflection of a gang of thieves doing bad for justified ends. But in the second book, you're stuck with the same characters, except now they're facing a mystery that's not quite so perfectly tuned to their own issues.
Still, that's all right. This is a good book, even if it's not as perfectly thematically relevant as the first. These early books continue to not be as funny as the more recent ones in the series, which I miss as I'm not particularly a fan of straight tough-guy noir. But there are some great scenes here, some gorgeous landscape and weather descriptions, and a quick-moving plot. Overall it's worth the read.
What are you currently reading?
Busted Flush by Brad Smith. I'm only about fifty pages in, but I am very much not enjoying it – primarily because the main character is a total asshole, while the author seems to be under the impression that he is an admirably straight-talking man. The plot has just kicked off, so I will give it a little longer to see if it improves.
Prince of Darkness: The Untold Story of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, Wall Street's First Black Millionaire by Shane White. An excellent nonfiction book about Jeremiah Hamilton, a historical figure who is sadly barely known these days but was a New York City celebrity in the 1830s to 50s. White is very upfront about the fact that he had little material to work with; no one preserved Hamilton's letters, diaries, business books, etc, and so White is restricted to mentions of Hamilton from newspapers and court cases. Luckily Hamilton made frequent appearances in both. And yet despite this limitation, the story White managed to write is extremely thorough and detailed. I was impressed.
Nonetheless there are unanswered questions. Hamilton, at various points in his life, claimed to be from Virginia, Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico, other spots in the Caribbean, and even – once! – from India. What we do know is that he made a fortune in the early stock market, not once but twice, losing the first in the Panic of 1837. He dabbled in real estate, investments, insurance, railroads, factories, and more or less all possible money-making ventures. He was certainly a shady businessman (he first appears in the historical record attempting to smuggle counterfeit money into Haiti, and was involved in so many insurance scams that the various insurance companies of NYC eventually banded together and put a lifelong ban on offering any insurance to any project that involved Hamilton), but White points out that such behavior was hardly unusual, and John Jacob Astor and Cornelius Vanderbuilt – other NYC millionaires of the time – did the same.
It's such behavior, though, that seems to have gotten him largely ignored by the black community; the one mention of him in Frederick Douglass' Paper, a black newspaper, is not exactly complimentary: "Compare Sam Ward [an antislavery activist] with the only black millionaire in New York, I mean Jerry Hamilton; and it is plain that manhood is a 'nobler ideal' than money. [...] [Hamilton] has fled from his identity like a dog with a tin kettle tied to his tail!" Hamilton certainly seems to been a con artist, but it's unfortunate that this distaste for his principles contributed to his disappearance from modern awareness. Because even if Hamilton was an asshole, his mere existence is incredible. As White points out when Hamilton demanded bribes in exchange for giving out stock tips: "It is worth pausing at this point to consider this moment in the city's history. Three years into a Civil War of almost unimaginable carnage in which the central issue was the existence of racial slavery, less than twelve months after the Draft Riots, New York's own cataclysm, in which the mutilated bodies of African Americans were hanged from lampposts, an unapologetic wealthy black man let it be known that he was willing to receive cigars and champagne – mind you, only the very best – as acknowledgement of his "kindness". In order to gain privileged access to this African American's wisdom about the market prospects of listed corporations, modern entities beyond most Americans' understanding, that were laying thousands of miles of railroad track and steaming huge iron vessels across oceans, some white New Yorkers were willing almost to grovel. [... Hamilton's] chutzpah was remarkable."
The book doesn't limit itself to Hamilton's biography. It's a fantastic history of New York City from 1820-60 in general, covering topics like early Wall Street; the Great Fire of 1835 which burned most of downtown Manhattan; the ending of slavery in New York, the Draft Riots, and early Jim Crow laws, including segregation on the commuter rails; early newspapers – Hamilton was close friends with Benjamin Day, founder of the New York Sun; Thomas Downing, another rich black New Yorker, the owner of an oyster restaurant on Wall Street; the Five Points slum; and more.
It's a really excellent book, chock-full of fascinating trivia and tied together by an author who is in sure control of his material. Highly recommended.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Soframiz: Vibrant Middle Eastern Recipes from Sofra Bakery and Cafe by Ana Sortun, Maura Kilpatrick. A cookbook that I was interested in because I once spent time in Syria and Oman, and I was hoping to recreate some of the things I ate there. Unfortunately this book leans heavily on the baking and is light on the cooking – nothing wrong with baking, I just find it personally less appealing.
Many of the recipes here are extremely fiddly and precise; I'd much rather visit the actual Soframiz bakery than try to replicate them myself. Unfortunately it's in Boston, so I won't actually be doing that any time soon. But there were some recipes here that looked good. I have taken particular note of "Persian-Style Carrots and Black-Eyed Peas", their version of shakshuka, and "Whipped Feta with Sweet and Hot Peppers". Yum.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Mucho Mojo by Joe Lansdale. The second book in the Hap & Leonard series, which I started reading at the end and am only now going back to read the early books. Hap is an ex-hippie, liberal white trash, and Leonard is a black gay Vietnam vet Republican. Despite this, they are best friends in rural East Texas, where they alternatively solve mysteries and get caught up in thriller/suspense action scenes.
In this book, Leonard's Uncle Chester has died and left all of his belongings, including a house, to Leonard. Chester played an important part in raising Leonard, but disowned him when Leonard came out as gay, and they therefore had not spoken in decades. That complication is added to the fact that Chester died of Alzheimer's, and so the belongings he left behind are confusing and mysterious: boxes of expired coupons, a key to nothing, a painting of an old house, geometric doodles, a copy of a library book.
Leonard and Hap move into Chester's house with the intention of renovating it before trying to sell. In the process of replacing some floorboards, they discover a mysterious trunk buried beneath the house, which proves to contain the skeleton of a young boy and dozens of child porn magazines. The police, of course, assume that Chester was the murderer. Leonard becomes convinced that Chester was actually trying to catch the real killer, but was hampered by a local police department that was willing to turn a blind eye to missing children when they were all poor and black. Leonard and Hap take it upon themselves to renew Chester's investigation, figure out the clues he left behind, and catch the murderer before the next child disappears – all while hampered by continued suspicion that Chester might have been the guilty party after all.
I find that the second book in mystery series can often be weak. In the first book, the characters and setting are specifically designed to be foils to the mystery: in Savage Season, the clash of idealism vs cynicism in Hap and Leonard's contradictory outlooks is the perfect reflection of a gang of thieves doing bad for justified ends. But in the second book, you're stuck with the same characters, except now they're facing a mystery that's not quite so perfectly tuned to their own issues.
Still, that's all right. This is a good book, even if it's not as perfectly thematically relevant as the first. These early books continue to not be as funny as the more recent ones in the series, which I miss as I'm not particularly a fan of straight tough-guy noir. But there are some great scenes here, some gorgeous landscape and weather descriptions, and a quick-moving plot. Overall it's worth the read.
What are you currently reading?
Busted Flush by Brad Smith. I'm only about fifty pages in, but I am very much not enjoying it – primarily because the main character is a total asshole, while the author seems to be under the impression that he is an admirably straight-talking man. The plot has just kicked off, so I will give it a little longer to see if it improves.
