Myth of Park Bench Six

The contemporary scene holds no more tantalizing puzzle than the myth which has developed around the name of Bernard Mannes Baruch. How did it come about that this son of Reconstruction South Carolina, with Sephardic roots in colonial New York; this elegant if idiomatic Wall Street “speculator” (as he described himself to a senatorial committee), with the look of an affably shrewd eagle; this opulent and persistent kibitzer of wartime Presidents, should become in his eighty-eighth year a household legend?

What explains the great success of the first volume of Baruch: My Own. Story (Holt, $5.00) ? This chatty rendering of Baruch’s romantic boyhood memories and of how he made his first millions in company with Thomas Fortune Ryan, Charles W. (Bet-a-Million) Gates, “Diamond Jim” Brady and other turn-of-the-century Waldorf swells, has held a steady place at the crest of the Times and Herald Tribune bestseller lists from the very week of its publication last summer.

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Forrest Davis

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The contemporary scene holds no more tantalizing puzzle than the myth which has developed around the name of Bernard Mannes Baruch. How did it come about that this son of Reconstruction South Carolina, with Sephardic roots in colonial New York; this elegant if idiomatic Wall Street “speculator” (as he described himself to a senatorial committee), with the look of an affably shrewd eagle; this opulent and persistent kibitzer of wartime Presidents, should become in his eighty-eighth year a household legend?

What explains the great success of the first volume of Baruch: My Own. Story (Holt, $5.00) ? This chatty rendering of Baruch’s romantic boyhood memories and of how he made his first millions in company with Thomas Fortune Ryan, Charles W. (Bet-a-Million) Gates, “Diamond Jim” Brady and other turn-of-the-century Waldorf swells, has held a steady place at the crest of the Times and Herald Tribune bestseller lists from the very week of its publication last summer.