(p. C7) The Philadelphia merchant banker Robert Morris, reputedly the richest man in Revolutionary America, performed prodigies in financing the war and then staving off the new country’s insolvency. He was bullish on America’s future, and when he returned to private life in 1784, he initiated a variety of ventures–a fleet of ships trading with China and India, multiple manufacturing enterprises, and, not least, vast assemblages of unimproved interior land–that eventually landed him in debtors’ prison. Ryan K. Smith offers a readable and enlightening portrait of this busy and turbulent life in “Robert Morris’s Folly.”
For the full review, see:
CHARLES R. MORRIS. “Financing the Founders; Morris built a French-style palace out of Pennsylvania logs in the hope that Marie Antoinette would visit.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., AUG. 30, 2014): C7.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date AUG. 29, 2014, and has the title “Book Review: ‘Robert Morris’s Folly’ by Ryan K. Smith; Robert Morris built a French-style palace out of Pennsylvania logs in the hope that Marie Antoinette would visit.”)
The book being reviewed is:
Smith, Ryan K. Robert Morris’s Folly: The Architectural and Financial Failures of an American Founder, The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014.