The Money Kings, by Daniel Schulman

The saga of the German-Jewish immigrants — with now familiar names like Goldman and Sachs, Kuhn and Loeb, Warburg and Schiff, Lehman and Seligman — who influenced the rise of modern finance. These industrious immigrants would soon go from peddling trinkets and buying up shopkeepers’ IOUs to forming what would become some of the largest investment banks in the world. Schulman chronicles their paths to Wall Street dominance, as they navigated the deeply antisemitic upper class of the Gilded Age, and the complexities that tested their empires and identities as Americans, Germans and Jews.

 

 

When Women Ran Fifth Avenue, by Julie Satow

Here, journalist Julie Satow draws back the curtain on the 20th-century American department store and the three visionary women who took great risks, forging new paths for the women who followed in their footsteps: Hortense Odlum of Bonwit Teller, Dorothy Shaver of Lord & Taylor, and Geraldine Stutz of Henri Bendel. This stylish account, rich with personal drama and trade secrets, captures the department store in all its glitz, decadence and fun, and showcases the women who made that beautifully curated world go round.