Monday's Reviews Today: Norb Vonnegut’s Debut & Stephen P. Cohen’s Middle East
-- Publishers Weekly, 6/19/2009 8:30:00 AM
Norb Vonnegut's debut novel, Top Producer, meets the “gold standard for financial thrillers,” putting the frenzied, cutthroat world of Wall Street’s best stockbrockers on brilliant display. The author, a veteran fund manager, “handles the arcane terminology and slang of Wall Street with aplomb, never letting it get in the way of the story.” And Stephen P. Cohen’s Beyond America’s Grasp: A Century of Failed Diplomacy in the Middle East “should become required reading for those interested in the Middle East.” Cohen, director of the Institute of Middle East Peace and Development, “provides a richly detailed history of diplomacy in the region and its implications for current relations.”
Top Producer
Norb Vonnegut.Minotaur, $24.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-312-38461-6
Vonnegut’s debut meets the gold standard for financial thrillers as it puts the frenzied, cutthroat world of Wall Street’s best stockbrokers (aka the “top producers”) on brilliant display. Ripples from the bizarre murder of Charlie Kelemen, wealthy hedge fund operator, quickly reach his best friend, Grove O’Rourke. A top producer at the boutique investment bank Sachs, Kidder and Carnegie, O’Rourke tries to help Kelemen’s widow sort out some financial questions. This process leads him deeper and deeper into a labyrinth of deceit. As fallout from Charlie’s death and dealings start to taint O’Rourke, the sharks, inside and outside his own firm, smell blood and begin to circle. O’Rourke won’t go down without a fight, and not all the blood in the water will be his. Vonnegut, himself a veteran fund manager, handles the arcane terminology and slang of Wall Street with aplomb, never letting it get in the way of the story. 100,000 first printing. (Sept.)
Beyond America’s Grasp: A Century of Failed Diplomacy in the Middle East
Stephen P. Cohen. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25 (320p) ISBN 978-0-374-28124-3
In what should become required reading for those interested in the Middle East, Cohen, director of the Institute of Middle East Peace and Development, provides a richly detailed history of diplomacy in the region and its implications for current relations. The book begins with Woodrow Wilson’s idealistic initiatives, which germinated into a “confused legacy [that] continues to be at the heart of the problem between the United States and the Middle East.” Cohen takes a tour of major players and key events, including Egypt and its nationalist movement, Iran under British imperialism, the roots of a Saudi-U.S. alliance and the evolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Cohen provides broad suggestions for contemporary diplomacy, generally emphasizing the importance of avoiding a “one-size-fits-all” policy. He discusses policies in the region of both Bush administrations, and remains timely in presaging the new administration’s diplomatic message. When Cohen concludes, “To overcome despair over these relationships, which is now so common, requires the elaboration in our imagination of a best-case scenario,” he sounds prescient, and the rigorously researched history he provides make his words ring true. (Nov.)
