Customer Reviews

Diamond Jim Brady: Prince of the Gilded Age

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I wanted to like this book, but it seems to have been put together in a hurry. Mr. Jeffers facts were not checked. I don't know if I should blame the author or the editor. pg 305 - 309, Washington Roebling the NEPHEW of the Brooklyn Bridge builder died on the Titanic, not the bridge builder who lived until 1926.

Brady is NOT entombed in Green-Wood cemetery in Brooklyn, he is in the ground in Holy Cross cemetery in Brookyn. pg 319

My head hurt from the mistakes! THey are throughout the book. I hope Mr. Jeffers is more on top of his other works - this one was painfull.

This book reveals what, sadly, the recent Burns PBS documentary 'New York' totally ignored; The whole wonderful parade of characters and events that defined the Gilded Age. While the book has flaws (Reggie Vanderbilt was the great-grandson, not grandson, of Commodore Vanderbilt, and J.P. Morgan was not 'the most hated financier' in America) it still does a good job of bringing to life this epochal time. Especially enjoyable are the descriptions of the New York cafe and restaurant society (Emeril eat your heart out!!) that Brady and Lillian Russell were so much a part of. This book is a good starter for those beginning to explore this period. From here then read Strouse's 'Morgan; American Financier', Patterson's 'The Vanderbilts' and Gregory's 'Families of Fortune' and your off to a good start!!

Someone once wrote that there is more to history than wars, treaties, and presidents. This story of Diamond Jim Brady and his platonic friend Lillian Russell makes for great reading of the gilded Eighties, Gay Nineties, and Naughty Naughts. The flamboyant Brady made his money selling railroad equipment and didn't hesitate to spend it on his passion for diamonds, food, or lavishing gifts upon others. It's true that Jim enjoyed advertising himself, but he did enjoy giving gifts to others. When he moved to his West 86th street home on Manhattan he refurnished it with entirely new furniture along with a complete new wardrobe. He introduced New York to the automobile which ran on an electric battery which had a cruising range of thirty-six miles. Since it would be bad for his image if it broke down, he had a friend test drive it for five successive days in the early morning hours. Most people eat to live, but Diamond Jim truly was one who lived to eat. His gustatorial tales fill the book. During the removal of a kidney stone it was found that his stomach was six times larger than normal. I will share a very funny line from the book regarding Jim's wearing of diamonds. It was a rule of his that "diamonds larger than doorknobs should be worn only in the evening." I did find that Diamond Jim had feelings of insecurity regarding his appearance when he was turned down in marriage from a woman named Edna. Jim lamented, "I asked her plenty of times to marry me and she always refused. ...There ain't a woman in the world who'd marry a fat, ugly guy like me." He also offered one million dollars to Lillian Russell to marry him, but she turned him down saying, "Why ruin a beautiful friendship?" If you enjoy American social history you have a treat waiting for you in reading this book.

If you are looking for an enjoyable book about an interesting historical character, look no further. Paul Jeffers, chronicler of Teddy Roosevelt and Grover Cleveland, reaches back once again to the Gilded Age in painting an entertaining portrait of Diamond Jim Brady. An up-from-the-bootstraps son of an Irish immigrant saloonkeeper, Brady would amass a colossal fortune in the burgeoning railroad and steel industries of the late 19th Century. This colossal fortune he used to cut an imposing figure on the New York City social scene, giving new meaning, in the process, to the concept of "living large." One New York restaurater dubbed Brady the best 25 customers he ever had. On page after page, Brady plunges into 14-course meals, often in the company of the era's most renowned American actress, Lillian Russell, who routinely matched the rotund Brady plate-for-plate. Jeffers' descriptions of Brady's voracious appetite are worth the price of the book: "He stationed his chair so that there were four inches between the edge of the table and his stomach. Eating ended when the gap had been closed."

There's more to Jeffers'new book than Brady's prodigous eating forays. It's actually an engaging history of New York high society in the period between the Civil War and World War I. Robustly recommended.

This book brings you back to the Gilded Age, through the story of Diamond Jim Brady. I couldn't believe how enticing this rags-to-riches story was, especially for people interested in this time period. The author brings Diamond Jim Brady to life, with factual details on his relationships, his love for food, his jewelry collection, and much more. This is one biography you wouldn't want to miss!

The golden age was an exciting time for many. Jim Brady was certainly ahead of his time. His generosity knew no bounds and he was truly a man of the ages.

Diamond Jim Brady, H. Paul Jeffers; John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (2001)


Written by an author whose natural, unhurried affection for the wheeler-dealer Brady & his times enabled the birth of a warm, unpretentious book (c.t., "Fred Allen, His Life & Wit," Robert Taylor's sterile biography of a likewise warm, adventuresome fellow).

Money Isn't Everything: Jeffers probably had 1/10th the budget of the endless parade of arid "big-name" books (the majority of which are pulped six months after publication date), & still got the job done.

Post Note (12/12/10): We used to spend the last two weeks of the annual racing season at Saratoga Springs, staying in what was once a wonderful B&B.

One day, I was at the racetrack, looking over the names of the horses in an upcoming race. None made the impression I (a hunch bettor) was looking for. But for some lightly nagging reason, the word "Canfield" - part of the name of a horse in the race - struck me as being significant.

Apathy was all that was required to craft the tale I tell now, for I failed to act on the faint tremor of an instinct. "Canfield" (his full name, forgotten now) won the race - & at a nice price.

The next morning, I came out of our room & noticed the brass plate on the door of the room that was across the hall from ours (we stayed in the "Diamond Joe Brady" room. We toyed with the idea of finding a local hardware store that could create an almost-identical plate that could then be switched with the Brady plate. The B&B is now on the market. If you happened to have made five million dollars on the race with the Canfield horse, go ahead - buy the mansion & rename our old room, the "Diamond Joe Quimby").

I looked more closely at that brass plate. The room had been named after someone who once owned & ran the Canfield Casino (now a museum) in Congress Park, only a short walk from our lodgings. And since we had stayed in the Brady room for the past four or five years, that meant that I had passed & seen the "Canfield" brass plate at least a hundred times - & still hadn't remembered why the name sounded familiar.

As they say, there's a million ways to lose a horse race. This was one of the more unique methods.

I did not like this book at all, in fact I never finished it. I would say that only one fifth of this book is actually about Diamond Jim Brady. Everything else is about a particular time, a certain person, or happening. I wanted to read about the person and life of Diamond Jim Brady and I guess he just didn't have that interesting of a life to warrant a book about him. I was not interested in reading about all the things going on during the period he lived. And it also drove me crazy that Jeffers would always refer to him as James Buchanan Brady. I've never read a bio where the author is always referring to the subject by their full name. I found this extremely irritating. I'll be careful in the future to make sure I don't read any other books by Jeffers.