The Death of the Banker

The Decline and Fall of the Great Financial Dynasties and the Triumph of the Small Investor

By: Ron Chernow

Narrated by: Michael Kramer

Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's summary

With the same breadth of vision and narrative élan he brought to his monumental biographies of the great financiers, Ron Chernow examines the forces that made dynasties like the Morgans, the Warburgs, and the Rothschilds the financial arbiters of the early 20th century and then rendered them virtually obsolete by the century's end. As he traces the shifting balance of power among investors, borrowers, and bankers, Chernow evokes both the grand theater of capital and the personal dramas of its most fascinating protagonists. Here is Siegmund Warburg, who dropped a client in the heat of a takeover deal because the man wore monogrammed shirt cuffs, as well as the imperious J. P. Morgan, who, when faced with a federal antitrust suit, admonished Theodore Roosevelt to "send your man to my man and they can fix it up". And here are the men who usurped their power, from the go-getters of the 1920s to the masters of the universe of the 1980s. Glittering with perception and anecdote, The Death of the Banker is at once a panorama of 20th-century finance and a guide to the new era of giant mutual funds on Wall Street.

©1997 Ron Chernow (P)2017 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

A bit out of date

The book itself was well-written, typical Ron Chernow's work, but it's getting a bit too old to recommend it. Quite a bit of the information on regulations are long out of date, but it was a surprisingly good listen.

Note copyright/printing date

It's difficult to really get to the heart of changing American finance without a telling of the 2006 mortgage crisis. Up through the mid-1990s, this book does a thorough and often fascinating job of telling the story.

Excellent

Great explanation of how banking has changed. Full of colorful characters too. Many you’ve never heard of before.

Big Picture? Got it. Details? Not So Much.

One of the great advantages of audiobooks is that they can get you through passages that would otherwise prompt you (or at least me) to quietly give up on the printed text. The tangle of rigging and navigation in the Aubrey-Maturin novels, for example. Or that excruciating catalogue of late medieval Parisian architecture in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. But the financial terminology in The Death of the Banker is another matter.

I get the broad outlines of Chernow's thesis, and the handy bar graph he creates to illustrate it is so simple, even I can imagine it without the help of a picture on a page. But Chernow's familiarity with financial concepts leaves us (ok, me) panting to catch up. Without a helpful explanation--like those provided in his magnificent Hamilton bio--I can't tell a "securities market" from a "commercial paper market". Given time, I can noodle out what he means by "the financial allocation function", but by then, the story has moved on and I need to (once again) rewind.

Still, I get the overall concept: industries once tethered to their bankers have now been liberated by (and made beholden to) small investors like you and me. Chernow makes it clear that, like all triumphs, that of the small investor has its downsides, too. The obliteration, for example, of true "relationship banking", when men who knew and trusted each other whispered advice in paneled libraries. Yes, you'd have to be of a certain financial standing to enjoy that level of attention. But it's better than the faux-intimacy banks (along with most other brands) foist on us wholesale nowadays.

After the long introductory essay, "Tycoons", comes as a welcome change. Here Chernow presents two brief studies of J. Pierpont Morgan and the Warburg dynasty. As with philosophical and political ideas, I have a much easier time grasping financial principles if I can see them acted out in history. So, with all my shortcomings as an audience, I still managed to learn something.

Michael Kramer does a fine job with all of it. Like all good narrators, he sounds interested in what he's reading and wants to make it interesting for us. Alas, his efforts behind the mic are somewhat marred by a sibilance that the "Small Speakers" setting on my iPod (yes, I still use an iPod) almost succeeded in banishing.

Different Than my Usual

This book is on a different subject than my normal audible choices. However, I really enjoyed it. The author included many personal historical details of the people covered in the book. I didn't that expect in a book about finance. This was a more rounded approach to the subject matter.

Overarching Overview of Banking Biographies

A good read all on its own, this work provides a primer for understanding the world of modern finance. It also provides a perspective to make greater sense of Ron Chernow's other works.

Recommended for all who want an understanding of how our current financial systems came to be.

Interesting but dated

Published in 1997, this short history of modern banking is very interesting, but obviously will out of date. It adequately covers it's title Subject, however, for by 1997 the imperial banking houses, and luminary bankers, were a thing of the past. Only 4 hours long, and we'll read by Michael Kramer.

Deep insights, wide comprehension, lively pace

I have read Mr Chernow's giant tomes The House of Morgan and The Warburgs. I liked them very much. But I like Mr Chernow better here, in this more squeezed format. In those huge books he had to labor to tell the whole story, which can be ponderous, versus here, where he can pluck out the really meaningful moments and toss them up with clever turns of phrase. The story can shed its ponderous elevator-music stretches, and sparkle. I am not one to love a movie merely because it has a romping pace to it: I require depth with my liveliness. And Mr Chernow delivers it. Here, despite my countless prior readings in this field (I've heard or read most anything in this non-fiction catalog with words like "banker," "Wall Street," or "money" in the title), the story (and let's be clear, the story principally of "high finance," versus the street-level "Main Street" stuff, though this moves toward the fore as the story goes along) snaps brilliantly into view, passage after passage. A new sheen appeared on the old characters and events. I bought a print version of this (1997-published) book, but was not enticed, flipping through it. Each passage seemed like a splinter, like a bit of a kaleidoscope turn, but I couldn't see any order. This audio version has set me straight on that. The narrator, to start, is a perfect fit. He sort of purrs in a dry amused voice that fits the wit and grace of this crackling-good prose. The writing is in a great articulate English that sadly may be fading. Meanwhile the actors, and their motives, and the picture large and small,all appear in clear relief and perspective. There is some conceptual background to help us filter the stories: it returns from time to time to remind of its theme of the dynamics and adventures of bankers in the three-cornered tug of war between capital sources, bankers allocating capital, and capital's consumers, but plunges back into the story in bold color and detail. I couldn't stop chuckling.
Now, about the aged nature of the book (20 years old now): it shows its age. But it bears this gracefully, handing me tools to understand the present.

Amazed: Banking History is Fascinating and Amusing

It's a rare breed of historian who can take a subject as apparently dull as "the demise of bankers" and make it fascinating and entertaining.

Think you'll be glad when a book of this nature is over? Think again! Pressing "Play" and already counting your lucky stars that Michael Kramer's brilliant, wry voice gets this history over with in a paltry 4 hrs and 37 mins? You are, I suspect, in for a very welcome rude awakening... you are about to discover that you are an unapologetically passionate student of the history of bankers (and banking), and to those who doubt the sincerity of your conversion, you will wish for the voice of Kramer as you utter your full defense: "You must read Chernow's The Death of the Banker... then we can talk."

AUDIBLE 20 REVIEW SWEEPSTAKES ENTRY

Banking History made fun

Chernow takes a potentially dry topic: The history of Banking, and makes it fun. The book itself is relatively short and yet, adequate. Most of us are unfamiliar with this topic, and so, every page (every minute?) brings to light new perspectives on the world of finance and international relations. If you are interested in history, it is likely that you know about things like Alexander's conquest, the Napoleonic wars, the American Revolution, the ascent of China etc, but it is not likely that you know much about the financial systems that hold sway over us today. So, I endorse the reading of this book.