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A review by lauren_endnotes
The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen
2.0
The story peaks early, and the remaining 3/4 of the book is a jumble of apologetic mishmash. Cohen would have served his reader better by not interjecting himself into the biography of someone else time and time again. Cohen has an agenda for this book, and he bent the story to fit it. I lost count of the time he states "He would have said this..." or "He would have believed this way...". These conjectures became so tiresome and annoying and I ended up skimming the last few chapters.
2 stars because Zemurray's early life was fascinatingly manical and a wild ride ... but I already knew this story. I first learned of this story (Zemurray's plot in Honduras) after reading Kinzer's [b:Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq|90540|Overthrow America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq|Stephen Kinzer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1316727674s/90540.jpg|87380], and was so captivated that I spent the next year studying it extensively... I read everything I could get my hands on about bananas, Central American history and geography, New Orleans in the early 1900s, Gilded Age US politics, Great White Fleet, and Samuel Zemurray and other assorted characters in this "story".
I totally recommend learning more of this story because we continue to see the ramifications of these geopolitical power plays today, over a century after the "banana republics"; however, this book is not worth more than a cursory glance.
2 stars because Zemurray's early life was fascinatingly manical and a wild ride ... but I already knew this story. I first learned of this story (Zemurray's plot in Honduras) after reading Kinzer's [b:Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq|90540|Overthrow America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq|Stephen Kinzer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1316727674s/90540.jpg|87380], and was so captivated that I spent the next year studying it extensively... I read everything I could get my hands on about bananas, Central American history and geography, New Orleans in the early 1900s, Gilded Age US politics, Great White Fleet, and Samuel Zemurray and other assorted characters in this "story".
I totally recommend learning more of this story because we continue to see the ramifications of these geopolitical power plays today, over a century after the "banana republics"; however, this book is not worth more than a cursory glance.