Fascinating story of the invention of sugar packets and Sweet n'Low, but at the cost of a family's harmony and conhesiveness. ( )

What a great story! Ambition and greed and heartbreak and stupidity and pathology and all the evils of humankind packed tragically into a single family story. Every family has its story, and I only wish I had the time and talent to chronicle my family's foibles as skillfully as did Richard Cohen.
I share with Mr. Cohen the wish to know my own hidden answers about my family's past. I sympathize with everyone's self-destruction. When the money comes flowing in, it's too easy to avoid doing the hard things. Corruption is easy.

Thank you for showing me how the truth can set us free.
I especially love your quote..." to be disinherited is to be set free." ( )

This was a very strange story - the dark secrets and family feuds behind a seemingly mundane sweetener manufacturer. I’m not sure what I expected with regards to this book – it had been on my to-read list for so long I’d forgotten why I’d added it in the first place. But it didn’t disappoint. I’ll admit there were a few times when I thought the technical details about the industry could have been scaled down, & at times there just wasn’t enough dirt dishing for my liking. But as it was written by a member of the family I can understand why there wasn’t more muck spread, & this was balanced out a little by the honesty that was there. I remember as I read being impressed by Cohen’s ability to interpret his family. Not that these interpretations are necessarily right, as they are just his own take on things, but because of the amount of insight it must take to be objective on any level about the way members of your own family treat one another. It stopped the book being either a bitter attack on relations nor a soppy sentimental dirge. The balance was really fairly spot on.
( )

What drama, what intrigue, what pathology! I always say that someone needs to tap my family for disertation material, but after reading this book I realize we are practically the Brady clan. The interpersonal drama is fascinating and sad and funny, but it is really only the tip of the iceberg. This book is a wonderful historical document of a certain kind of immigrant experience. It is also a blast to read. After finishing I immediately ordered another Cohen book, "Tough Jews." I can't wait to learn about the other side of this man's family. ( )

I wrote this review in May of 2007 for a readers' advisory project. For the sake of the project, I had to keep my official comments uniformly positive.

What I said (in May, 2007):

Sweet and Low by Rich Cohen. The story of the dysfunctional family behind the Sweet-N-Low sugar substitute empire, as told by a disinherited member of the clan. Clever writing, colorful characters, and a broad perspective on the impact of artificial sweeteners on American culture make this family saga worth reading.

What I really thought (in May, 2007):

This book kept me reading, with is always a good thing. However, it was not without its flaws. The author is writing about his own family, but since he grew up not in Brooklyn but in Glencoe, IL, there's a lot he doesn't know. For example, Cohen doesn't know his "Uncle Marvelous's" level of involvement in the embezzlement that almost brought down the company. Cohen (who is also the author of a book called Tough Jews, about Jewish gangsters), would like to come across as a street-smart guy, but that's hard to do when you're from the ultra-wealthy North Shore area of suburban Chicago.

Cohen does offers some interesting insights into the the impact of artificial sweeteners (and "the dieting craze in America") on American culture. But, if anything, the perspective is a little too broad. His digressions on dieting, organized crime, and immigrant Jewish culture, and the proper running of a family business, go on a little too long. There's too much stuffed into the book, and way, way too many footnotes and similes, many of them irrelevant.

What I think now (Dec., 2013):

Cohen has some interesting things to say about the way families work.On page 7, he has the following exchange with his uncle Marvin:

[Uncle Marvin] said, "This is not easy for me. You children were always a big part of us. And yet it's not so unusual either, this kind of split in the family."

[Rich Cohen] said, "I guess it's why so few people know their second cousins."

Toward the end of the book, Cohen writes, "So this is how it ends, how cousins grow apart, this is how the members if the family have children and you have children and the children grow up as strangers, who have children, until any connection is lost. So this is how the planet is populated. This is how Brooklyn continues". (p. 262).

These observations have stayed with me all these years, perhaps because I've seen family splits ("few people know[ing] their second cousins") happen more than once. ( )