Thread by @DanielSchulman

First review of my new book, THE MONEY KINGS (11/14/23, @AAKnopf), is in:

"Schulman...delivers an ambitious and captivating group portrait of Jewish financial dynasties ‘with profound legacies’…. Full of vivid personalities and intriguing tales"
publishersweekly.com/9780451493545

8 years in the making, THE MONEY KINGS is the Gilded Age saga of the founding families of Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros, Kuhn Loeb, and J & W Seligman & Co. Together they left a seismic imprint on 20th century. Yet their role in the rise of modern finance was just the start /2

These towering firms were formed by German-Jewish immigrants who in the mid-19th century sought refuge in the US from an empire that relegated Jews to a permanent underclass. Many were grads of what Mayer Lehman's great grandson called "Harvard Business School for Jewish Boys" /3

In other words, they got their start peddling, venturing deep into the American interior to visit remote mining camps, farms, and rural outposts

Some of the mightiest investment banks of the 19th/early 20th centuries were born out of bulging rucksacks & overloaded carts /4

Initially, both the Lehman and Seligman clans based themselves in Alabama, opening dry-good stores. Eventually, the Seligmans returned East, while the Lehmans put down roots in Montgomery, growing involved in the cotton trade /5

During the Civil War, Mayer Lehman undertook a remarkable mission to broker southern cotton to raise funds for Confederate POWs. Het met with Jefferson Davis in Richmond and attempted to make contact with Ulysses Grant /6

Lehman, described as an “unreconstructed rebel,” would later apply for and receive amnesty and a pardon from the Johnson administration /7

The Civil War, requiring massive bond-selling operations on both sides, hastened the financialization of American life, and the subjects of my story transitioned from merchants to bankers during this era /8

They would go on to capitalize some of the nation's most iconic companies—Kodak, Sears, Woolworths, GM, Paramount, the Union Pacific etc. etc.—and played a pivotal role in the nation's industrial transformation and its evolution into a first tier financial power /9

And they would help to build and bolster the nation’s economic system in numerous other ways.

Kuhn Loeb’s Paul Warburg, for instance, was one of the originators of the Federal Reserve system. /10

Edwin Seligman, son of the founder of the Seligman banking dynasty, helped to bring the progressive income tax into being /11

But the legacy of the “money kings” (as the leading financiers of the era were known) goes beyond finance

The Goldmans, Sachses, Lehmans et. al. helped to make it possible for millions of Russian/Eastern European Jews fleeing persecution & mob violence to immigrate to the US /12

Over the course of several decades, members of these German-Jewish financial dynasties engaged in a dizzying philanthropic spree of institution-building in order to sustain, educate, and advocate for their often-impoverished religious brethren /13

Remarkably, many of the institutions they helped to build and nurture thrive to this day. To name a handful:
@EdAlliance
@HenryStreet
@vnshealth
@montefiorenyc
@AJCGlobal
@TheJDC
@ADL
@92ndStreetY
@BarnardCollege
/14

The financier at the heart of my story is Kuhn Loeb's Jacob Schiff. He is not well remembered today, but he was a Wall Street eminence whose only equal was J.P. Morgan. /15

He was also one of the greatest philanthropists in modern history and the de facto leader of American Jewry during his lifetime, a period known as the "Schiff era" /16

If you, like me, were descended from Jewish immigrants who came over from Eastern Europe or Russia during the turn-of-the-century, you should know that Schiff played a major role in making your American story possible /17

The immigration debates of that era were similar to today's, with pols stoking fears of disease-carrying foreign criminals perverting the nation's character. Schiff and his allies battled for decades to prevent the country from slamming the door on immigrants and refugees /18

And they shouldered a remarkable amount of responsibility for taking care of their own and were constantly fundraising for relief efforts at home and abroad

This appeal was a doozy /19

Meanwhile, Schiff used his influence and his fortune to pressure the Russian Empire to end its persecution of its Jewish subjects. Until Russia changed its ways, he worked to starve it of access to American money markets /20

His incredible role in the Russo-Japanese War, helping underwrite Japan's war effort as it struggled for international financing, earned Schiff a prominent place in antisemitic conspiracy theories that persist to this day /21

Sadly, conspiracy mongers have seemed to be the most invested in keeping Schiff's memory alive, for all the wrong reasons. But his monumental legacy—in finance, in philanthropy, and much more—deserves to be much more widely understood /22

As you can imagine, being a book about Jewish financiers, I delve deeply into the origins of modern antisemitism—and the forces and players behind it /23

For what it is worth, I don't consider this a book of Jewish history. It's a book of US history—about the rough-and tumble rise of Wall Street, an unparalleled era of philanthropy, the creation of institutions, laws, and policies that have profoundly shaped American life /24

It's a helluva story, featuring all of your favorite heroes and villains of the Gilded Age.

If the topic sounds interesting, please spread the word. And I'd be honored if you considered pre-ordering /25 penguinrandomhouse.com/books/541779/t…