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Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California
 
 
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Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California (Hardcover)

by Frances Dinkelspiel (Author)
Key Phrases: graft trials, graft prosecution, wine association, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York (more...)
4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)

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Customers buy this book with Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean: How a Generation of Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out an Empire in the New World in Their Quest for Treasure, Religious Freedom--and Revenge by Edward Kritzler

Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California + Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean: How a Generation of Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out an Empire in the New World in Their Quest for Treasure, Religious Freedom--and Revenge

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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
Hellman was California’s premier financier in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a man whose financial acumen catapulted the state into the modern era and laid the groundwork for one of the world’s most dynamic economies. Bankers such as Hellman were the men who smoothed the rough edges of the economy. They offered credit and invested in companies. Dinkelspiel, Hellman’s great-great-granddaughter, posits that during financial panics—which happened about every 10 years in the nineteenth century—bankers provided stability. Hellman was both a builder and financier, a major investor and promoter of eight industries that shaped California—banking, transportation, education, land development, water, electricity, oil, and wine. At the height of his power, at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, he controlled more than $100 million in capital, equivalent to $38 billion in 2006. --George Cohen

Review

"Visionary financier Isaias Hellman was the Warren Buffett and Alan Greenspan of early California rolled into one. He arrived in L.A. as a practically penniless, 16-year-old German Jew when there were only 300 other Europeans in town. Three decades later, he controlled much of the booming city’s capital, land, and public works—then he acquired Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco through a merger, earning headlines as the West’s richest man. Hellman starred in so many aspects of the state’s phoenixlike rise between the Civil War and the Depression that he became our Zelig, only with a really thick portfolio. The banker’s bonds with the financial elite—fellow Jews like Meyer Lehman (his brotherin- law), gentiles like Collis Huntington—made skittish pioneer depositors in both cities less prone to panic. Still, this giant figure had been lost to history until local journalist Frances Dinkelspiel, Hellman’s great-great-granddaughter (and the sister of this magazine’s president), stumbled onto his papers at the California Historical Society. Eureka! Many underappreciated developments in California’s astonishing adolescence—the emergence of SoCal, the UC system, post-1906 San Francisco, Hiram Johnson, Lake Tahoe, Southern Pacific Railroad, Hetch Hetchy, U.S. Zionism, you name it—are recovered here in elegantly restrained prose. A-"--San Francisco Magazine

"Impressively researched and engagingly told...Dinkelspiel does an excellent job of tracing Hellman's career as a financier, and sketches in a crisp portrait into the glittering San Francisco Jewish community into which he and his family ultimately settled. [A] compelling account of Hellman the giant of finance."--The Los Angeles Times

"Carefully researched and superbly written memoir...Dinkelspiel's biography not only brings to life the transformation of California into the state with the strongest economy in the nation, and the outside personalities that forged it, but rescues from the proverbial dustbin of history the remarkable life and achievements of a man whose energy, creativity, resourcefulness and love for his adopted country had been all but forgotten. A marvelous resource, a dramatic slice of Western history and a splendid read."--The San Francisco Chronicle

"Journalist Dinkelspiel has filled a notable gap in California's history by writing a much-needed biography of her remarkable great-great grandfather Isaias Wolf Hellman (1842-1920). As one of California's pioneer financiers and an advocate of modern banking methods, Hellman became founder, president, or director of 17 banks, including Wells Fargo Bank, Nevada Bank of San Francisco, and the Farmers and Merchants Bank. He is attributed with stabilizing the financial panic of 1893 in Los Angeles by stacking $500,000 worth of gold coins on the counter of the Farmers and Merchants Bank in plain public view, hence the title of this book. The author personalizes Hellman's life by recounting his emigration from Bavaria to California in 1859 and comparing the vastly different social acceptance of Jews in those places. Many details of his family history are provided, along with insights into his relations with a broad swath of other early legendary California business families. Recommended for public and academic libraries with interests in early California financial and Judaic history."--Library Journal

"Towers of Gold" is a vivid portrait of the financier who changed California forever. Attempted stagecoach robberies, an assassination attempt, bank runs, the 1906 earthquake -- it's all here in Frances Dinkelspiel's meticulously researched and masterly crafted biography. After reading "Towers of Gold," you'll never see downtown Los Angeles of San Francisco's financial district in quite the same way again.” - Julia Flynn Siler, author of the New York Times bestseller, The House of Mondavi


See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 384 pages
  • Publisher: St. Martin's Press (November 11, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0312355262
  • ISBN-13: 978-0312355265
  • Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #35,303 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #7 in  Books > History > United States > State & Local > Pacific Northwest
    #7 in  Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Regional U.S. > West
    #22 in  Books > History > United States > State & Local > West

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Customer Reviews

15 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.7 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Loved it, November 12, 2008
By S. Epel (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
I was hooked from the introduction when the writer describes discovering boxes of her great-great grandfather's letters and papers and realizing she had a story to tell. From that great beginning, this book continued to hold me in its vivid, dramatic rendering of California history and of this man, a true tycoon. Until this book, I had not heard of Hellman , but now I see his influence regularly in my life in California, starting with Wells Fargo banks. Hellman not only started this bank, but the author tells an amazing--and chillingly timely--account of how Hellman stopped an 1893 bank panic singlehandedly. If you're interested in California history (imagine a time when the streets of LA were dirt, as were the floors in many homes), immigrant history, Jewish history, and a juicy story of wheeling-dealing tycoons, you couldn't find a better scribe than this writer and her elegant, exciting, and well-told history.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read! Fascinating Book About a California Financier., November 11, 2008
Frances Dinkelspiel has written a fascinating account of the life of Isaias Hellman, her great-great grandfather and a man whose banking skills seemingly transformed California. The Hellman name is well-known in the Bay Area - Warren Hellman, a billionaire merchant banker - puts on the free, three-day Hardly Strictly Bluegrass concert every year in Golden Gate Park - but I didn't know anything about this Hellman.
Isaias Hellman came to Los Angeles from Germany in 1859 and started the region's first successful bank, the Farmers and Merchants Bank. Los Angeles was just a small settlement back then. The streets were unpaved, the only way to get there from San Francisco was by steamer, and a murder a day was common. By starting a bank, Hellman brought much-needed credit to the region and helped start its transformation into one of American's biggest cities.
He goes on to do many important things, like donating the land to start the University of California, lending funds to Harrison Gray Otis to gain complete control of the Los Angeles Times, and spinning deals with the railroad tycoons Collis Huntington, Henry Huntington, and Edward Harriman. In fact, his friends read like a "Who's Who" of the 19th century and include Levi Strauss, Mayer Lehman, and Jacob Schiff.
In 1905, Hellman took over the Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco. That was just one of the banks he controlled. According to Dinkelspiel, he headed up or served on the board of dozens of other institutions, including the Nevada Bank, and controlled more than $100 million in capital. This guy clearly had a brain for business.
Dinkelspiel does a wonderful job of bringing history to life. There are lots of great scenes in Towers of Gold. There are earthquakes, fires, droughts, assassination attempts, betrayals and love affairs. It has all the elements of a great modern movie.
The title refers to a time when Hellman single-handedly stopped a bank run in Los Angeles in 1893 by piling his own money into towers of gold on the counters of one of his banks. The sight of all that glistening gold calmed panicking depositors, who then return their money to the vault. If only we had someone like Hellman around today.


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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A great read, November 12, 2008
By Susan Wolfe (San Francisco CA) - See all my reviews
In this meticulously researched book, Frances Dinkelspiel tells the all-but-forgotten story of Isaias Hellman, a man who was as well-known in his era as Warren Buffet is in our's. Hellman was one of the leading financiers of early California, a banking pioneer who laid the foundations for what is now one of the world's biggest economies. Dinkelspiel patched together his story by going through tens of thousands of pages of his personal papers, yet her deft story telling weaves his personal history seamlessly into the dramatic events of his times.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best California histories I have ever read
After I finished this book, I ordered six more copies so I can give them to my friends. This book is so well written that it pulls the reader into the story and before you know it... Read more
Published 22 hours ago by Martha Harris

1.0 out of 5 stars No editor
I stopped reading at page 25, when I was informed that Isaias Hellman traveled across the dusty Los Angeles plain through fields of poppies, lupine, and mustard which were as tall... Read more
Published 24 days ago by George McLaughlin

5.0 out of 5 stars EXCELLENT GIFT BOOK FOR HISTORIANS OF CALIFORNIA
EXCELLENT GIFT BOOK FOR THOSE WHO LIVE IN CALIFORNIA AND ARE INTERESTED IN THE HISTORY OF THE STATE, ESPECIALLY FINANCIALLY. A GOOD READ.
Published 2 months ago by S. SILBERT

5.0 out of 5 stars This Gold is rich
This is so much more than the biography of just one man. Frances Dinkelspiel's telling of the true story of Isaias Hellman brings to life the history of modern California, from... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Kemble Scott

5.0 out of 5 stars California's Forgotten Financier
Frances Dinkelspiel has written a fascinating, meticulously researched portrait of her ancestor Isaias Hellman, one of the premier bankers of the late 19th and early 20th... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Mahlon Christensen

5.0 out of 5 stars Joyce McMenamin's Review of TOWERS of GOLD - Originally Published Nov 18, 2008 at IDEA MASTERS Online Real-Time Magazine.
A Multi Generational Family Affair: A Great-Great-Grand-Daughter Intimates About 'Another Way' the West Was Won by a Master Networker from the 19th Century. Read more
Published 7 months ago by M. J. McMenamin

5.0 out of 5 stars From J. Kaye's Book Blog
"Towers of Gold" by Frances Dinkelspiel is about her great-great-grandfather, Isaias Hellman. If you have never heard of him, you might know one of the banks he built, Wells Fargo... Read more
Published 7 months ago by J. Kaye Oldner

5.0 out of 5 stars Epic unknown history of California
Towers of Gold rediscovers Isaias Hellman, once justly celebrated as one of the most important businessmen in California's development, both in Los Angeles and San Francisco... Read more
Published 8 months ago by D. Levy

4.0 out of 5 stars Must Read
Loved it. Towers of Gold is fascinating as a wonderful look backward at California history, but it's also really interesting - in these difficult (read: horrific) economic times... Read more
Published 8 months ago by L. Okuhn

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating!
To read Towers of Gold is to step back into a fascinating and unpredictable period in California's history. Read more
Published 8 months ago by A. Bartlett

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