The Lives
There are a ridiculous number of memoirs
and biographies out right now by and about
Jewish people. But now
might be the perfect time to
gift The Man Who Knew:
The Life and Times of Alan
Greenspan by Sebastian
Mallaby. Mallaby, the Paul
A. Volcker Senior Fellow
for International Econo-
mics at the Council on
Foreign Relations, has been
praised for presenting a
balanced view of Greenspan, from his
childhood with a single Jewish mother in
Washington Heights to his role as Nixon
advisor to his leadership of the Fed, an insti-
tution of which he was deeply suspicious.

Mallaby naturally examines what and
when Greenspan knew in the lead-up to
2008’s crash, and the conclusions he draws
illuminate that time period and the role of
regulation overall. Ben Bernanke has said
the book is “highly recommended” for
“anyone with an interest in postwar U.S.

economic and political history.” The New
York Times said it’s “fun to read” — no
mean feat given the subject matter.

If you want to go from macro to micro
on the subject of Jews in American business,
pair The Man Who Knew with Lloyd
Handwerker’s Famous Nathan. The book’s
subtitle says it all: “A Family Saga of Coney
Island, the American Dream, and the
Search for the Perfect Hot Dog.”
Handwerker, who is Famous Nathan’s
grandson, wrote the story of his Jewish
immigrant grandfather with Gil Reavill,
starting with the illiterate Nathan’s arrival at
Ellis Island, when he didn’t speak a word of
English and had only $25 stuffed in his
sock, to a thriving business on Coney Island
that helped the hot dog become iconic.

“It all comes done to I did this, and I did
that.” That’s how Robert Gottlieb sums up
his new book, Avid Reader: A Life. Gottlieb
spent his life as an editor, at The New Yorker,
Knopf and at Simon & Schuster, and worked
with some of the most fascinating personal-
ities in 20th-century American letters, from
Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Doris Lessing
and Joseph Heller to Lauren Bacall, Nora
Ephron, Bill Clinton and Miss Piggy. His
memoir is filled with publishing world
gossip and also reveals much about his
Jewish New York boyhood. Dwight Garner,
of The New York Times, wrote that Gottlieb’s
memoir reveals him as “a kind of Zelig of
American publishing.” That’s precisely what
makes his book so much fun. l
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