While telling the family history - colorful people, medical issues and disinheritance included - it also gives a historical outline of factories in Brooklyn, Murder Incorporated, depositions and sugar substitutes.
All this it tries to do in less than 300 pages, and that is not the only problem. The book was written by Cumberland founder Ben Eisenstadt's grandson, Rich Cohen, the youngest son of the disinherited daughter, Ellen.
He has no chance but be biased. Everything in the book comes from second hand information and incidences retold by different family members (the way they remember it). Several footnotes address refusals for interviews. So, it all has to be taken with a grain of salt, I think.
Just why were Ellen and her issue disinherited? Because Ellen brought Ben to the doctors at New York Hospital and those doctors killed Ben, because Ellen flew off to Paris when Ben was in a coma and he had only a few days to live, because Ellen did not visit often enough after Ben died, because Ellen did not sign the waiver regarding Ben's will, because Ellen married too young, because Morris wanted to buy Herbie into the business, because Ellen left Flatbush for Bensonhurst and Bensonhurst for the world, because Ellen's son wrote about Herbert's family but not about Uncle Abie, because, in his book, Herbert acknowledged Frank Sinatra but not Ben and Betty, because if Ben loved Ellen how could Ben love Betty, because Ellen tried to steal Ben away from Betty, because Gladys was there and Ellen was not, because Sherry moved in and Gladys doled out the pills and threw cold coffee on Betty? It's like infinity. If you think about it too deeply, you go crazy.
It is still an intriguing story and the writing is smooth and simple, but we will probably never know how things actually went down.
6/10
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