Recently, a friend turned me on to a book that I thought I should share with you. It’s a most informative book and a great read. The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King by Rich Cohen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012, 242 pp.) received rave reviews when first published, and deservingly so.
It is the story of Samuel Zemurray, a penniless immigrant from Russia who arrived in the United States in 1891, who by 1905 owned steamships, side-wheelers that crossed the Gulf of Mexico. Starting as a fruit peddler, he went on to become the head of United Fruit Company and one of the richest men in America. It is the story of the much heralded “American Dream” with “Sam the Banana Man” starring as the quintessential American embodying the virtues and vices of the Gilded Age “Robber Barons.”
The book is chock full of titillating and interesting tales of American history during the first half of the twentieth century. Replete with characters like “Machine Gun” Molony and more recognizable ones, including Che Guevarra and Fidel Castro, Cohen’s narrative is a history of the avarice of business leaders to make a buck as well as the nefarious machinations of the U. S. government in pitching “Dollar Diplomacy” and anti-communist activities in Central America.
From Honduras to New Orleans to New York and Boston, Zemurray’s life has a fictional quality that makes its reality even more remarkable.