Founders

What I learned from rereading The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen. ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- [4:47] This story can shock and infuriate us, and it does. But I found it invigorating, too. It told me that the life of the nation was written not only by speech-making grandees in funny hats but also by street-corner boys, immigrant strivers, crazed and driven, some with one good idea, some with thousands, willing to go to the ends of the earth to make their vision real. [8:56] Tycoon's War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America's Most Famous Military Adventurer by Stephen Dando-Collins (Founders #55) [10:00] Unlike Vanderbilt's other adversaries William Walker was not afraid of Cornelius when he should have been. [12:21] The immigrants of that era could not afford to be children. [12:42] The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World's Greatest Negotiator by Rich Cohen [12:54] He was driven