Joseph Wechsberg (1907–1983)

The author notes in the introduction to this book that he came from a family of merchant bankers; it shows, as this book is, in general, a very gentle and positive look at a number of banking powers. Time has not been very good to some of the firms represented in the book, most notably Barings and Lehman Brothers. The book came out in the mid-1960s, at a time when the old ways were starting to die out. The culture depicted in the book, I believe, has almost completely vanished, with the possible exception of the last, rather insubstantial, chapter on the Rothschilds. (For the Rothschilds, you're better off with Niall Ferguson's two-volume history.) A pleasant, but not a very deep read, mostly for folks who love the idea of the old-fashioned merchant bankers meeting in wood-panelled rooms. Not really recommended, as the material in the book is treated better elsewhere.… (més)

This was a lively and entertaining look at two worlds that no longer exist, from the perspective of food and gourmet meals.

The first part, which I found more enjoyable, shows Wechsberg's childhood in Moravia (a Czech-speaking part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) before and in the years after the first world war, and his life as a young man in Prague, Paris, and Vienna and as a traveling musician on ocean liners in the 1920s. This part was inherently more interesting for me, partly because I've read a lot of central European fiction more or less from this time period or slightly earlier, and also told more of a story. Also, there were lots of fascinating tidbits, like the 20 or so different cuts of boiled beef in Vienna, and the exploits of the women who frequented Maxim's in Paris in the 1890s.

The second part, which reads more like a collection of magazine articles (and probably was, since some of the chapters were published in a variety of US magazines) takes the reader on trips to French restaurants, truffle-gathering communities, and wine chateaus in the early 1950s. I found this moderately interesting in itself and as a portrait of a a way of life that, 50+ years later, seems almost as remote to us as the last days of the Austro-Hungarian empire must have seemed to Wechsberg when he wrote this book in 1953.

One of the most remarkable things about this book is Wechsberg's wonderful, lively, and humorous writing, because English is at least his fourth language (after Czech, German, and French) and he only learned it on coming to the US in 1938.… (més)