The Fish That Ate the Whale

January 23, 2012
Cohen provides a boatload of angles for his biography of little-known antihero, Samuel Zemurray (1877-1961), presenting his story as a parable of American capitalism, an example of the American dream in decline, the story of 20th-century America, a quintessentially Jewish tale, and “a subterranean saga of kickbacks, overthrows, and secret deals: the world as it really works.” Fortunately, Cohen (Sweet and Low) backs up his hyperbole. Once a poor immigrant buying ripe bananas off a New Orleans pier, Zemurray became the disgraced mogul of the much hated United Fruit Company. Along the way, he aided the creation of Israel; funded many of Tulane University’s buildings; and had a hand in the rise of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. Cohen claims Zemurray was to New Orleans what Rockefeller was to New York, but the better comparison may be to Robert Moses, who bulldozed both land and people to build many of New York’s roads, parks, and bridges. The reader gets to decide not only whether the ends were worth the means, but whether the means were worth the ends. Agent: Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, William Morris.

January 1, 2012

Arriving in America in 1891, Samuel Zemurray started out as a fruit peddler and ended up as head of the United Fruit Company. As told by Cohen, his is both a rags-to-riches success story and a cautionary tale about the damage done by corporate greed and the exploitation of other countries.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 15, 2012
In this gripping biographyit's as page-turningly exciting as any thrillerSamuel Zemurray, once the most powerful banana importer in America, comes off as a sort of real-world Charles Foster Kane (if Kane had been in the fruit trade and not a newspaperman). Zemurray was not above fomenting rebellion in foreign countries to ensure that he had a ready supply of bananas, and he was such a ruthless and clever businessman that he went head-to-head with the mighty United Fruititself an extremely powerful entityand emerged victorious. Cohen's lively and entertaining prose style (a ripe banana you have left in the sun that has become as freckled as a Hardy boy; juke joints that stayed open from can till can't) provides the perfect vehicle for this story of the surprisingly cutthroat world of the banana trade; it is nearly impossible to put the book down, and that's something you don't say about a lot of biographiesand especially biographies of businessmen. For anyone who enjoys a good life story, this one is an absolute must-read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)