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Summary: Trading practices of the Jewish community, 17C Amsterdam
Review: During the production of the film "The Hidden Fortress," the famed Japanese director Akira Kurosawa had been quoted to have gone through the following iteration: a seemingly insoluble situation would be crafted, and only after a concerted deliberation by the production team would the protagonist be given a way out, and the film proceed to the next scene. The reader need only be reminded of this anecdote to grasp the nature of this novel. Where no friends remain friends or enemies remain enemies, the protagonist Miguel Lienzo, a Jew migrated from Portugal to Amsterdam, hurdles through the ever-changing vistas of deception and schemes to obtain a monopoly on coffee, then (17C) an unbeknownst commodity to Europe.Tension is maintained throughout the novel by the sequential release of information. In place of the usual weapons, violence, and death, the sources of tension here are money (debt, credit, proceedings of deals from the Exchange) and the Ma'amad (the Jewish congregation), whose strict ruling proves a constant obstacle to liberal trading practices. Each piece of new information overturns what the reader had been made to believe till then, and Lienzo is forced to adjust his strategies accordingly. The book is written in a third person voice, except for the brief chapters written by Alonzo Alferonda, an expelled Jew and coconspirator of Lienzo's coffee trade. Alferonda's words not only add a personal tone to the book but also loom over the entire novel, portending that there are always additional dimensions to the unraveling schemes. Liss' depiction of the stock exchange (options and futures were known to be traded back then) and the Jewish trading community in Amsterdam alone to me made up for an intriguing read. The masterful sustenance of suspension was a delightful plus. It was indeed difficult to put down the book after starting reading.
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Summary: Bravo!
Review: The Coffee Trader, Miguel Lienzo, is one of us: His gutsy (almost American!) entrepreneurship is tested by repeat failure; his desire for untouchable beauty is stroked by hints of reciprocal lust; his longing for family harmony is dashed by brotherly betrayal; his devout faith is chilled by cynical religious functionaries; his friends turn out to be enemies, and those he thought opposed him become his saviors. David Liss followed his Conspiracy of Paper with another masterpiece. He takes us to a world utterly different then ours (1659 Amsterdam) and pulls us in seemlessly until we are part of the action. You'd better set aside enough time to read The Coffee Trader in one sitting, because once you started it, there's no putting it down.
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Summary: To gain a fortune in Coffee
Review: This has been one of the most pleasureable reads that I have had in a long time. The book had it all; love, money, coffee, betrayel and scandal all wrapped into one nice 364 page package. The book is an acocunt of how one man, Miguel Lienzo sought to make his fortune on the Amsterdam Exchange in the 1650s. Miguel was once a wealthy merchant who has fallen on hard times and now must live with his younger brother. This is the type of novel that sucks the reader in from the first page. With vivid discriptions that make the reader feel as if they are really in Amsterdam during the 1650s. One can not help but to be pulled into the plot. So sit back, relax, grab a mug of hot coffee and enjoy yourself.
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Summary: Amsterdam and coffee.... my two favorite things
Review: 17th century Holland was important for a lot more than art and tulips, and if nothing else, this book deserves praise for remembering that. The Netherlands was also the commerce capital of the world, the first modern republic, and famous throughout Europe for its religious tolerance. All three of these aspects come into play in this book, whose main character is Miguel Lienzo, a Portuguese Jew who flees the Inquisistion and finds acceptance in Amsterdam. He finds that his skill in lying, honed by years of pretending to be a Catholic, serves him well as a merchant and eventually a broker on the Stock Exchange. Unfortunately, as the book opens, he has just lost a fortune in a bad trade and finds himself in serious debt. So when a Dutchwoman acquaintance offers him a chance to be her partner in a scheme designed to take advantage of an obscure commodity - coffee - he jumps at the chance to regain his fortune, his luck, and his reputation. The details of the scheme - whereby they will establish a monopoly on coffee, simultaneously creating interest in this new "drink of commerce" and manipulating its price - are complicated and ever-changing, as the expected complications arise. At first, the pace is slow enough that Liss does a pretty good job of explaining just what is going on on the floor of the Exchange - what a future is, how stocks and money exchange hands, that sort of thing. And his descriptions of the Exchange itself are great - imagine Wall Street, if it were only open for two hours each day and held in an outdoor courtyard. But as the plot thickens, and moves and countermoves are made more and more desperately, it's increasingly hard to follow the flow of trading. This is a distraction, but it's a slight one, and it's possible to follow the story without understanding every detail of the Exchange. The plot twists themselves are another matter. Crosses and double-crosses fly past you so quickly its impossible to remember who's on what side, or what hidden motivations each character is keeping secret from the others. Major characters move to the background, minor characters come rushing in at the last minute to have a huge impact, and on occasion you're as helplessly confused as poor Lienzo. For all these faults, I still greatly enjoyed this book. It brings new depth to an era that is on the verge of becoming cliched, and it exposes a hidden underworld few of us are familiar with. My mom, who was born in Holland, read "The Coffee Trader" before she gave it to me, and while she didn't like it as much as I did, she said it was fascinating to her the way the Dutch were portrayed. I agree. In the end, the real hero of this book might not be Lienzo, or any of his colleagues, or even the coffee of the title. I think it's the city of Amsterdam and its people that are the stars here.
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Summary: A book to enjoy and remember
Review: I looked at all of the negative reviews, and don't think the negativity is merited. It did transport me to 17th century Amsterdam, and it was very entertaining, with fascinating insight into the Portugese Jewish Community that had fled to Amsterdam for refuge from the Inquisition.
The plot line was quite gripping, but the detours into detail were even more so. And it might help to understand financial terms and free market mechanisms. The main fault of the book might be that the author seems to like his protagonist, but has rather more sympathy for the Dutch community than the more difficult to understand rigid, traditional Jewish community. So he's sort of shooting himself in the foot since his protagonists are all Dutch Jewish Immigrants, but he doesn't seem to truly like where they come from. Still, despite the lack of empathy for the Jewish community, the book carried it off, and was one of my more memorable reads of the year, and I thought it talked down to the reader much less than the Da Vinci Dan Brown thriller. One of the snippets that linger for me is a lovely scene between Miguel and his sister-in-law, where the sight of her partially uncovered hair is a seduction... I'm of S. Asian origin, and we have many similar cultural taboos -- so I loved to see cross-cultural resonances like that one. Maybe my Dad having been a coffee planter has something to do with my liking for this book too.
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Summary: Portrait of greed
Review: The Coffee Trader is a historical novel set in the 1600s in Amsterdam, a town even then known for its freedom and liberalism. Jews flocked there to escape persecution elsewhere, and one of them, Miguel Lienzo, tastes coffee and the first time - and is changed forever. There aren't a lot of 'good guys' in this book; it's just that some of the bad guys are gooder than the badder bad guys! Sculdugery and intrigue follow, and it makes for an engrossing and obviously well-researched tale.
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Summary: Coffee trader could have been better
Review: The idea behind the story was good. A great setting, and good characters. The problems with the book were historical value was diminished by too much that was inaccurate; all of the charactes were disgusting and were tricksters, slobs and cheats, all painting the supposedly pious Jews of the period too look like dishonest greedy thieves....no one was righteous; all immoral or amoral, everyone out to cheat everyone else all for different reasons was depressing, and the long discussions about the commodity trade were confusing to someone who didnt know the business, and finally, too much vulgar language which was inserted to create a sense of salacious appeal which was uneceesary.....although the concept was good and the setting interesting, the book failed in the story line itself
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Summary: great read!!!!
Review: Wonderful book that I could'nt put down!! Very well written and a great book if you like historical fiction. It reminded me because of the setting of Girl With A Pearl Earing.
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Summary: Coffee, women and tradition
Review: I read the whole book and I don't know why. Individually, the story of the commoditiy traders and the history of the Jews from Portugal and Spain are interesting topics, but the story line used by Liss left me wanting. I think Liss did not take either aspect of the novel to any depth leaving just the whipped milk on my latte wasting away.
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Summary: For people who understand stocks, puts, calls and futures
Review: Miguel Lienzo is a Portuguese Jewish merchant in 17th century Amsterdam. In the last couple of months his fortune has taken a turn for the worse, he has lost quite a lot of money and is now heavily in debt and living in the damp cellar of his brother's house. Also, he has a powerful enemy in the merchant Parido, who is also a member of the Ma'amad, a committee that oversees the actions of the Portuguese Jews in order to prevent them from doing harm to the Jewish community. This Parido misuses his position to try and get information to ruin Miguel's trading. And then Miguel gets an offer that is too good to be true: the Dutch widow Geertruid Damhuis invites him to join in a daring scheme to trade in a new commodity, coffee. But all is not as it seems and it takes Miguel quite a while (and a lot of daring investment of money he does not own) to see through all the machinations and come out on top. The description of 17th century Amsterdam and the position of Jews and merchants is very revealing, but I guess one needs to have a better insight than I have into the intrigues that can be worked out using stocks, options, futures, puts and calls to truly understand the financial wheelings and dealings that go on in the book and that in the end make Miguel's fortune. Also, the characters are rather thin, even the main character Miguel remains quite one-dimensional throughout the book which is a shame, because there are plenty of opportunities to turn this book from an average financial thriller into a more literary novel.
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