REFLECTIONS, MEMORIES AND CONFESSIONS

As a listening experience, this personal memoir by diplomat, financier, and art collector John Loeb offers two distinctive and equally appealing narratives. One is an insider's view of the wealthy, celebrated, and socially elite. The other, the gifted young person's struggle against ingrained prejudice and snobbery. Scion of several of America's leading Jewish financial families, Loeb, now 90, seems to have gone everywhere and met everyone. Narrator James Lure captures Loeb's grace, cosmopolitanism, and abiding humanism, and his role in a long family tradition in finance and public service. The early chapters, which recapitulate the history of Jewish financial families in America, are most compelling. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine [Published: DECEMBER 2020]