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Rating:  Summary: Clever, well researched, has movie potential Review: It's not as entertaining as I'd hoped, but it's still a fun read. I suppose I was expecting more scandal or more irony, or perhaps both. The book does provide a glimpse into Gilded Age business and social life that I was looking for, though it doesn't provide as much color and dirt as I'd expected.Andy Logan, the author, only alludes to the dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of scandals whose payoffs made William Mann wealthy enough to afford his house in the country and his incredible, artery clogging meals at Delmonico's. The book's climax is a libel trial with Mann on the side of the plaintiff, and the resulting dirt falls on Mann, not on his victims. This is no spoiler -- the hand of Justice seems foreordained. The book gets 3 stars because I think an author could have written a more compelling story around this material. Logan was, of course, a first class writer, but she didn't actually develop any characters, even though she provides the profusion of facts from which characters could be built. Aside from Mann himself, she fleshes out the backgrounds of some of his opponents, but never really structures a story around them. This leads to my conclusion that this would make a good movie. The script could be a wooden-headed Hollywood costume vehicle, of course, or it could highlight the ethical ambiguities attending both the obvious bad guys and the apparent good guys of the Gilded Age, especially in New York. Logan provides a wealth of well-written material to support such a script, though her words don't provide all of the drama or comedy the film would need.
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