The Reichmanns; Family, Faith, Fortune, and the Empire of Olympia & York

New York: Times Books [Random House], 1997. First Edition. First Printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xviii, 810, [4] pages. Illustrations. Notes. Selected Bibliography. Index. Very slight wear to DJ edges. Anthony Bianco is a senior writer at Business Week. He is the author of two books, The Reichmanns: Family, Faith, Fortune and the Empire of the Olympia & York and Rainmaker: The Saga of Jeff Beck, Wall Street's Mad Dog. He lives in New York City. The Reichmanns of Toronto were one of the ten wealthiest families in the world; they lost their wealth when Paul Reichmann risked everything on a property development project on London's East End which imploded, leading to the loss of ten billion dollars. The family straddled the disparate worlds of casino capitalism and Jewish fundamentalism. The commercial empire built by the Reichmanns was one of the greatest the world has ever seen. Their stunning rise and their tremendous fall is one of the great stories of our century, all the more astounding because they have been and remain ultra-Orthodox. Business Week reporter Anthony Bianco expertly balances the Reichmanns' business dealings with a penetrating look at the hidden world of ultra-Orthodoxy. He has obtained exclusive and unprecedented interviews with all of the major family members. Their story is both a thrilling business narrative and an engrossing investigation of the intersection of values, tradition, and commerce. Derived from a Kirkus Review: A tremendous, all-encompassing biography of one of the most powerful and secretive family dynasties of the 20th century. The Reichmanns descend from Hungarian-Jewish scions who, according to legend, purposely took the name Reichmann ("rich man'') in hopes that it would prove prophetic. The Reichmann elders, Samuel and Renee, were forced to flee Hungary as the Nazis approached, and settled first in Tangier. Bianco lays to rest some of the more noxious stories of their life there--notably that Samuel traded currency with the Nazis--and reveals the extent to which their charitable contributions aided Jews in concentration camps. Using the family fortune, Renee was able to obtain lists of Jews deported to ghettos or camps, and personally organized thousands of packages of food to be sent to them. The Reichmann children--Eva, Edward, Louis, Albert, Paul, and Ralph--inherited this sense of moral obligation and dedication to business. After the war the family moved to Canada, where they established themselves as a powerful, wealthy, and deeply devout Jewish dynasty. After cornering the ceramic-tile market, Paul Reichmann formed Olympia & York, which owned buildings internationally and would, by the 1980s, become the biggest landlord in Manhattan. Paul, described by a colleague as ``the Einstein of buildings,'' had ever more grandiose dreams for his real-estate empire. The family's heritage is the real story here, and Bianco's prose is captivating. Fascinating and always smart, this is a stylish and intriguing look at the powerful intricacies of family, religion, and wealth.