"Our Crowd": The Great Jewish Families of New York

This historical biography was published more than 50 years ago but it outlines the first major European Jewish families to populate the northeast. All the characters are well developed. Most readers will recognize their names and enjoy learning of the impactful roles they played in developing America’s Financial Industry more than 200 years ago.

Our Crowd looks at the history of wealthy German-American Jewish families primarily in New York City. This is an interesting book, somewhat a companion volume along the lines of Birmingham’s book The Grandees which examines the lives of wealthy Sephardic Jews in New York City. Birmingham centers this book around the Seligmans, the Lehmans, Schiffs, and the Kahns. Frankly it was all rather confusing to keep them all straight. Most ended up in banking and intermarried a lot, all to keep the wealth and Jewishness among “our crowd”. Mostly I enjoyed the book, except Birmingham’s generous use of foreign words without translation as if we all speak fluent German, or Yiddish. I would have liked to have seen photos of these people he wrote about, a pet peeve of mine in some biographical histories that don’t have them. Otherwise however I enjoyed the book and if this type of wealth history is your thing, as it is for me, then this book is for you.

I purchased Our Crowd a bit by mistake, on a recommendation for a different book by the same author on a similar subject. Nevertheless, I found it to be very interesting and engaging, opening providing an insider's view of a community that I did not think that I had any interest in and was only dimly aware of. I intend to read the other books in the series as well as other books by Birmingham. I recommend the book highly. Interesting and entertaining.

Reading pleasure

Trying to remember all the surnames is difficult; however I highly recommend this book. History is great and anecdotes & eccentricities are also.

This book depicts the incredible story of a group of Jewish immigrants, who quite independently from each other, came to America virtually penniless, yet were able to amass vast fortunes!! They came to America from Germany in the nineteenth century, and this handful of Jewish families turned small retail stores into huge enterprises.I enjoyed reading about how the families created and dominated certain businesses , how despite breathtaking wealth they were barred from mixing with “the 400,” a register of New York’s most elite, because of their religion and humble backgrounds. I was also surprised to learn about the fact that even within the Jewish community, Jews from Spain wanted no part of German and Eastern European Jews.The author's prose is crisp, and well written. He creates a vivid portraits of the fascinating people involved in the multiple "rags to riches" stories. He also conveys a sense of what New York, and America, was like during this era. These were the aspects of the book that I enjoyed the most. However, I will confess that when the author sought to describe complex, arcane, financial transactions that created the platforms for the families fame and fortunes, I was, at times, lost.Overall, the author makes this very different time, place and these personalities come alive with nuance, color, context and "flesh and bone". I was entertained and informed. A good, if a times overly tedious, story.

Having heard references to "Our Crowd," I now assume at least some were to this book, the 1st edition of which was published in 1967. There have been 14 editions published. It's amazing, the gang is all here. You get to find out all about how the great Jewish names in American business, particularly in the financial industry, got going in the 19th Century. This includes families with last names: Warburg; Seligman (this name gets the most coverage); Guggenheim (the one that made it in a non-financial industry); Schiff; Straus; Goldman; Sachs; Loeb and much more.The individuals depicted worked hard, were discrete and hardcore-ambitious. Most had humble beginnings but became a kind of aristocracy, with summer homes in some of the most exclusive locales in America. They invented methods of doing business, and prospered.I think Our Crowd can be inspirational, to some extent, in that tells of many individuals that made it big in the Horatio Alger sense. The rewards went to hard work, persistence, education and risk.On the other hand, this book had many starts within it, and a great many detailed tangents. This made it often tedious to read, quite frankly. If the stories weren't true, the book would be unreadable due to broken threads of suspension, drama and continuity. The fact that the stories are true, however, makes Our Crowd a primary source to understand the history of American business.

This book was written long ago but remains a touchstone detailed study of German Jewish families who can to America. While parts were tedious, over all really well done and interesting to me. If it’s a subject you are interested in, it’s a must-read!

arrived promptly and as described.

This is about family trees but no family tree page to get it straight. Despite the great collections of art they seem to have, there were no portraits. It mentions some of the houses and their addresses but no pictures either old or new. Maybe it's because its an e-book, it's like it is. Anyways I did learn something I didn't know before. Somebody has to finance and structure big projects for countries. Taking risks and venturing out can be a way of life, I guess.

Thoroughly researched, Iit’s good to have all of this information documented. So many characters, it would have been helpful if the book had included family trees.

No longer new hardcovers available except at unrealistic cost or old, used paperbacks

Very straight forward writing. Not particularly smooth but informative about a specific group of people whose success still impacts American financial circles today.