Rating: 
Summary: Tuxedo Park reads like Leisure Suit Park
Review: While the premise was intriguing and I did enjoy finishing the book, I found it's title and cover to be misleading. Too little about wall st and too little re: the subject's direct impact on the war itself or the actual war. Also, I found that too much time spent meandering around the minute details of science.
Rating: 
Summary: Thank You Jennet Conant
Review: With her biography of Alfred Lee Loomis through her book, "Tuxedo Park", Jennet Conant has given those interested the best view yet of this extraordinary man. I have read many books regarding Wall Street when Mr. Loomis was a player, and many other books on the exchange of information between Great Britain and The United States during World War II, specifically on radar and atomic weapons. The name Loomis is a vague one at best, happily Ms. Conant has remedied this gap in the historical record and delivers a great deal of knowledge about the man and his talents.Exceptional would be an appropriate word to describe this man. A major financier on Wall Street, he not only was unhurt by the crash of 1929 he benefited from it. While enjoying after dinner conversation he could also play multiple games of chess with his back to the boards, carrying on both the conversation and the multiple games in his mind's eye alone. Clearly a man with a formidable intellect, it is not altogether shocking that after making a huge fortune on Wall Street, he walked away from it and the boards he served on to pursue other interests, interests that would have a major impact on the outcome of the Second World War. A capitalist to his core, when the need arose for development of important scientific research he routinely would take the money from his own pocket. Over the years this amounted to huge sums of money, and much was spent long before there was the urgency of war. He encouraged and financed the best minds in physics, literally feeding and housing them in a house turned private laboratory in one of the country's wealthiest enclaves Tuxedo Park. Write down any name from Einstein to Fermi to a host of Nobel winners and they all spent time at his homes on many occasions. And this man was just not a wanna-be with deep pockets. Whether it was innovations with radar, cyclotrons, or getting the armed forces to sit up and pay attention to devices they were in desperate need of, or gathering the money and talent to do whatever was required, he was the facilitator, and he literally made it happen. He also understood the science he was assisting. Without his organizing the manpower and the facilities to produce devices that were recently just science fiction, the tools that were so critical to winning the war would have taken years to develop if left to the federal government. The armed forces were of little help as they were inherently protective of their own turf and distrustful of the other branches and especially of the, "long hair", physicists. He also bridged the gap of distrust when the British wanted to share innovations The United States was nowhere near to developing. Fortunately diplomacy was almost as offensive to him as a federally run science project, so when the diplomats were arguing he would go off in to a corner and start swapping information. There were two events described in the book that are priceless. They not only illustrate all that is wrong with bureaucracy but also protecting one's turf when the turf is the same country. These events also proved why privately run efforts would beat Washington every day of the week. The military routinely dismissed the ideas and instruments that were suggested and then built. Mr. Loomis and his people knew better and they would go ahead and build a dozen prototypes, demonstrate them to the top brass, and watch the feeding frenzy begin. After watching these people who hours before had no time to waste on these ideas much less the actual product, Mr. Loomis would politely interject that all the arguing was unnecessary, as the devices were owned by him. The looks on the faces must have been worth any frustration leading up to the moment. All the infighting stopped as the bureaucrats and generals realized they were fighting over what was not theirs. The bickering stopped, and the results of the incredible researchers and Loomis were happily accepted, and orders for countless more were placed. The book is a very well written account a man who did not want history's attention, and until this book largely avoided it. He is gone now but the implements created by his money, his determination, patriotism, and the huge groups he assembled, are still in use today. They have advanced exponentially in their capabilities, but many started or were nurtured in Tuxedo Park. This country owes a major debt to this visionary.
| 
