Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* In this gripping biography it's as page-turningly exciting as any thriller Samuel 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 Fruit itself an extremely powerful entity and 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 biographies and especially biographies of businessmen. For anyone who enjoys a good life story, this one is an absolute must-read.--Pitt, David Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
AMID the vast outpouring of literature about America's banana empire in the Caribbean, no one seems to have written a full-fledged biography of the remarkable Samuel Zemurray, who guided the United Fruit Company through perilous times. Rich Cohen has rectified that oversight. Cohen, the author of "Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams" and "Sweet and Low: A Family Story," now gives us the fascinating tale of "Sam the Banana Man," a poor Russian Jew who emigrated to Alabama as a teenager and ended up controlling much of Central America. After starting out as a humble banana peddler in Mobile in the 1890s, Zemurray moved up to become a major importer in New Orleans, shipping in fruit from his firm's plantations in Honduras. When the Honduran president, Miguel Dávila, placed obstacles in his path in 1910, Zemurray simply hired some mercenaries, orchestrated a sham revolution and replaced Dávila with a more compliant president. Cohen duly condemns Zemurray's colonialist arrogance but also admires his chutzpah. At times, Cohen waxes almost Kiplingesque as he celebrates the man and his myrmidons: "I want here to sing an ode to the banana cowboy, that wild, unshaven, hell-raising fighter of yore, terror of the isthmus, hired gun in time of conflict, filibuster in time of revolution, arrived from the streets of New Orleans and San Francisco and Galveston, no good for decent society, spitting tobacco juice and humping extra shells in his saddlebag. These roughnecks found a benefactor in Zemurray, who rode and drank with them." Zemurray was first a customer, then a major competitor of United Fruit, though his own firm was much smaller. In 1929 he sold out to his rival for 300,000 shares of United Fruit stock and retired to New Orleans, where Huey Long assailed him as a corrupt plutocrat. Meanwhile, the Depression was laying waste to United Fruit's balance sheet. As the value of Zemurray 's stock plummeted, he decided it was time to foment another revolution. He staged a boardroom coup and installed himself as chief executive, prompting The New York Times to call him "the fish that swallowed the whale." Zemurray led United Fruit back into the black. He also had a hand in the founding of Israel. But his final triumph, in Guatemala, would leave a dark legacy. There, United Fruit confronted a democratically elected leftist president, Jacobo Arbenz, who began redistributing the firm's uncultivated lands to peasants. This time, instead of hiring armed mercenaries, Zemurray hired the public relations guru Edward L. Bernays to paint Arbenz as a Communist, while urging the Eisenhower administration to intervene. In 1954 the C.I.A. staged a coup that toppled Arbenz, touching off a cycle of revolution and reaction that lasted decades and claimed thousands of lives. Zemurray died at 84 in 1961, just a few months after the C.I.A.'s Bay of Pigs fiasco had demonstrated the limits of his approach to empire management. In Cohen's hyperbolic and often speculative telling, Zemurray looms as such a titan that even the United Fruit co-founder Minor C. Keith, "the uncrowned king of Central America," recedes into Zemurray's shadow. Cohen scarcely mentions the Vaccaro brothers, Zemurray 's fellow immigrants and fierce rivals, who founded Standard Fruit. And Cohen banishes Zemurray's relative-by-marriage Lillian Hellman to the obscurity of an endnote, even though Zemurray loomed large in her life and also, it seems, in her literature. For a balanced, comprehensive, soberminded assessment of Zemurray's career, readers should consult the many histories of United Fruit in its heyday. But Rich Cohen books constitute a genre unto themselves: pungent, breezy, vividly written psychodramas about rough-edged, toughminded Jewish machers who vanquish their rivals, and sometimes change the world in the process. Within this specialized context, Cohen's Zemurray biography admirably fills the bill. Mark Lewis is writing a book about America's colonial experience in the Philippines.
Library Journal Review
This spirited book introduces readers to Samuel Zemurray (1877-1961), known in his prime as "Sam the banana man." A Russian Jew who emigrated to Alabama in 1891, Zemurray eventually settled in New Orleans, where he grew to be head of the United Fruit Company. Known as the "octopus," United Fruit virtually ruled Central American republics in the first half of the 20th century, all because of banana exports. Cohen (contributing editor, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone; Sweet and Low: A Family Story) offers a lively biography of Sam and his empire, leaving the man and the company open to scrutiny and criticism while giving readers a remarkable profile of "a living, breathing, jungle-clearing, government-toppling banana man." Cohen also discusses bananas, their cultivation, gathering, shipping, sale, and consumption-a supply-and-demand success story for Zemurray and others like him. VERDICT This is popular history and biography at its best, making for an easy verdict: this book will appeal strongly to lay readers and scholars alike. Highly recommended to all. [See Prepub Alert, 12/5/11.]-Boyd Childress, formerly with Auburn Univ. Lib., AL (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.