Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #449628 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-20
• Released on: 2007-03-20
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .1 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Disinherited from the family fortune built by his maternal grandfather, Ben Eisenstadt, who invented the artificial sweetener Sweet'N Low, Cohen mines a wealth of family history in this funny, angry, digressive memoir. Ben worked as a short-order cook during the Depression and conceived of but failed to patent the sugar packet before he and his son Marvin hit pay dirt in the 1950s with the saccharin formula for Sweet'N Low. Today a distant third to Equal and Splenda, Sweet'N Low is run by Marvin's son Jeff, who took over after Marvin and several other chief officers were charged with tax evasion and criminal conspiracy in 1993. This story of the family-owned, Brooklyn-based company is, at its heart, a tale of immigrant strife and Cohen's fractious Jewish clan, including his grandmother Betty, for whom "love is finite," and his hypochondriac, housebound Aunt Gladys ("a tongue probing a sore"), who connived to eliminate her sister (Cohen's mother) from Betty's will. Though Cohen often dollies back in a self-conscious if breezy effort to pad his memoir with big ideas—the history of artificial sweeteners, the post-WWII weight-watching craze, etc.—the real grace of his writing (seen in Tough Jews) lies in the merciless, comic characterizations of his relatives. Photos. (Apr. 11)
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From AudioFile
Author Rich Cohen tells the history of his family, and that of the artificial sweetener Sweet'N Low, in this enthralling and truly funny production. Black humor prevails--as this is a family that isn't very nice to one another. Cohen reveals a plethora of family foibles as he details Jewish-American life in Brooklyn in the twentieth century, along with the fortune built by Cohen's maternal grandfather, who invented the artificial sweetener. Ambition and corruption are placed in high relief as family members are cruelly disinherited for just trying to help. Cohen's narrative and vocal characterizations are straightforward. Overall, he does a good job making this story compelling. M.R.E. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
Cohen, well-known author and contributing editor to Rolling Stone, is also the grandson of Ben Eisenstadt, a short-order cook turned lawyer turned inventor who created the sugar packet in 1945 (stolen by Domino Sugar in 1946) and made a huge fortune selling saccharine under the well-known brand name Sweet'N Low. Eisenstadt rode the wave of the dieting craze in America, packing Sweet'N Low out of the same Brooklyn factory for decades; but when he died in 1996, he left several hundred million dollars for the family to squabble over, and Cohen's side of the family was disinherited. Rather than being bitter, Cohen chose to carve out his pound of flesh by outing the family secrets. This story has it all: entrepreneurial spirit and the rise to fame and fortune from meager beginnings, rich New York history going back to the 1600s, Jewish gangsters, a federal raid, and family scandal; there is also the history of sugar, dieting fads, politics, and the debate on carcinogenic food. Fun all the way through. David Siegfried
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