[laughter] >> use a cellphone. >> welcome our moderator, rick kogan of the chicago tribune. [applause] >> thanks for having me. if you buy one book at this extraordinary festival it should be this book. i am not kidding you. some of you know me as overenthusiastic and hyperbolic but this thing is -- was a revelation on some many different levels. please welcome its author rich cohen. [applause] >> some of the north shore, proud son of neutral high school and i would dare say more successful and smart and we made him. i am down on him now. you came across this astonishing

story when you were a sophomore at tulane. i love this story. this is great. scan time. >> i am a cubs fan dealing with losing all my life and suddenly in 1985 the bears were incredibly great and when the bears with sir playoffs and went to the superbowl my father out of nowhere came up with two tickets to the super bowl and i wanted to see him in new orleans and the only way to convince my parents to let me go was tell them it was a college visit. when i got to to lane after awhile i started realizing, there was this big house the president lived in, one of the most beautiful houses you will ever see on st. charles avenue ended the long to kim marie was a name you heard and whispered and reminded me of the great gatsby when he said who is gets

the but i heard he killed a man. >> how deeply do you explore that curiosity at that point? that was a lot of years ago but some years ago. >> in new orleans there are some distractions. i took this class when you were -- i was a sophomore called jewish-american novels where i was introduced to great chicagoans. i had a teacher named cohen who was assessed with sam the banana man, the russian immigrant who came to russia and settled in selma, alabama and fell in love with bananas and started selling overright bananas and made $100,000 by the time he was 18 and he told the story to us first and foremost because this

was a guy saul bellow wrote about but for real. >> he sold his first banana in eighteen 93. what did he think? bananas were exotic then. you can buy them -- their were no grocery stores. give me the states of bananas if you would in 1893. >> the state of of banana being sold in america was not grown here which is interesting. >> like the beatles playing in liverpool. they were going to be huge. the first induction of bananas and a world exposition in -- sold by this slice. and the most exotic thing you could find. bananas tend to be consumed within a mile of where they were

picked. they were picked and they ripened in a ripening room because before you had a steamship you could never get them to the united states in time to consume them. it wasn't until random traders heading to the caribbean started buying these things, united fruit news ship has been damaged, in jamaica with his ship in dry dock, and give me 1,000 of them and get this favorable -- brought them to jersey city. lorenzo-vera baker who founded fruit. and in jamaica that became the house drink of the united fruit. >> united fruit becomes -- how many of you know anything about the history of bananas or united fruit?

you ever work for united fruit? this is why you have to buy this book. there are revelations plenty here. and in many cases, and something rich writes in here. what i took from this story, the eagles and excesses but the optimism that characterized his life that he could indeed be triumphant and love and the good and the bad to enroll in college, sign up for classes and pay tuition and study the life of sam the banana man. set him in his youth. destiny that he finds bananas or do you think which had he found

some other kind of business that he would have been successful because this is a character out of a great novel. was it serendipity? was it good fortune? bananas as opposed to oil wells or something? >> i believe character is destiny. if it hadn't been bananas, if he were in a different part of the country he would be successful with something else. he grew up until he was 14 on a wheat farm in western russia and his father died and he was sent to the united states legal make money and bring his siblings over and that is a huge responsibility and have a way to make money and starting with nothing he went to mobile, alabama and fell in love with it and went to mobile, alabama to see where they came in and notice the boston fruit company would take the bananas and put them in one set of box cars, middle bananas and another set

and take these yellow bananas that looked like this. and threw them in a big pile. and need to go bad. one freckle turning and two freckles right. they are trashed. we throw them in the sea. he said i will by the trash. one man's trash is another man's treasure. and the rotten bananas, devising a system that rented space on a lawyer central train, right over the box cars. and peddlers, that supermarket people would come to him and use box cars like they were pushcarts selling his bananas. >> one of the other things all over the map, one of the highlights for meet in rich's

research is newspapers at this time were unbelievable in charting central america and all that stuff. were you surprised how helpful they were, old news clippings in charting this story that i had never heard of this guy before. >> there is a spirit about the newspaper's. one thing i liked about it is a story -- the longevity of it, john ford's vision of america and you end up in the cold war and the wild west. honduras was seen by a lot of people as the american frontier. when the american frontier clothes a lot of cowboys went to central america and they were called banana cowboys and newspapers covered it like rudyard kipling's america, like a great big adventure and wrote about these colorful characters around at the beginning of the

banana business and the term banana republic, a lot of people don't know this but honduras had no extradition treaty to the united states so it became a place where american criminals on the lam would hide out. there was an article in the new york times like a haven of destitutes for something and one of the criminals that was hiding out ended up writing a bunch of short stories about the scene. he is the pen name when he punished -- publish these stories. his first book was cabbages and kings about the banana company, the vesuvius banana company and use the term banana republic for the first time. >> by 1899 he sold 20,000 bananas. by 1903 he sold 574,000 bananas. within a decade he would be selling more than a thousand year. give us a sense of where the

bananas were being grown. there were a number that you detail in this amazing book "the fish that ate the whale," there were a number of companies, a lot of companies. how were they are operating and where were they operating? >> all over central america. in nicaragua and guatemala and honduras. the first real big banana company starts with the co-star rica railroad. minor keith his older brother build the first intercontinental railroad which went across the isthmus to know anything about railroads and as the brother to help him. was like 45 or 50 mile railroad straight across and laying there for 20 miles of that railroad 4,000 people died including his three brothers. all his brothers and he discovered the railroad made no money and he heard about bananas and started throwing them.

it would clear the jungle in the clearing along the railroad track. restarted growing them to feed his workers and for something to do and that wound up becoming one of the parts of united fruit. it was complete accident of timing to the point were like you said no bananas were grown here. >> actually it is not -- a banana is not technically a fruit, is it? how many of you think the banana is a fruit? got another choice what it could be? it is not a vegetable. it is the barry. isn't that interesting? >> a banana is not a tree. the banana stem is really believes that are coiled up and as it grows the leaves unfold. i would find out about this. decided i wanted to know everything about this. i decided to grow a banana in connecticut and -- bad idea.

it did well through july and august and then just turned black as i have seen anything in my life. as black as the sky at 4:00 in the morning. i thought this would mess up my son's sense of how the world works so i went to the store and got a bunch of bananas and put them up and told him to take a look and see what is going on. he went crazy. it is growing bananas! very exciting and so -- why are there stickers on these bananas? >> do they grow like that, daddy? sam starts doing very well. some of his initial early trips to central america. >> vertical integration was a big fan and a business story is the thing. early on there was because it isn't a free it is very vulnerable. grows fast and there's a lot of fruit and it bears fruit all year long so it is fantastic but very vulnerable and one of the

ways is it doesn't have roots. grows -- the wind knocked down so hurricanes can destroy a whole crop. in 1899, year without bananas. almost the entire banana crop of the boston fruit company was destroyed. they decided they had to get a lot bigger. if you look to the origin of all the problems it starts with the decision they have to grow bananas all over the caribbean and all over central and south america and mexico and that really is the beginning of murray. they say when you purchase green bananas you believe in the continued existence of the world. murray decided to go from the garbage into yellow and turning and green was a big deal and he went to honduras and started buying up land with all the money he could borrow. borrowed from banks in new orleans and mobile and new york

until they wouldn't went him money anymore and he would go to the street and get money from the guys in the street we know as gangsters and he started buying all the land he good because the price was so low. he was buying virgin jungle on the north coast of honduras, land that was considered junk land. most people never lived in that land for the same reason is three brothers died. you died in the jungle and was the kind of thing you sell this land if you leave the room it falls down laughing. buying swampland in florida. and he came in and drain the swamp and put in modern sanitation systems and soon was growing his own bananas. >> one reason he was so successful is this was a guy who was not an executive at the time and he learned business -- i get the sense he was in stage of the curious about how is this done? how is this done? >> he had this idea you should know a business. every job in the business.

work every job in the business. he went to war with united fruit in guatemala. united fruit was based in boston and they used to tell him when he was doing wrong they didn't know what they were talking about. you are there, i am here. he lived in honduras. if you want to know, go see for yourself. i give you one of my favorite stories about when he was battling with united fruit. there was a piece of land both companies wanted between guatemala and honduras and they discovered it had two rightful owners and united fruit hired a bunch of lawyers and investigators and launched an investigation to determine who the owner was so they could buy it. murray bought it twice. never be smarter than the problem. >> honduras was a tough life for him. you had to be a really rugged --

not just cowboy but an individualist to go down there and steak the county claims. howard nemerov was it? >> very rough. it was the wild west with malaria. places where people were walking around with guns and there were fights and there was the fight between united fruit -- the company was a fight with soldiers and navies and ships and almost turned into an actual war between guatemala and honduras and murray -- i have this image of the grandparents or great grandparents who came from russia or from sicily or ireland or wherever they came from, guys in black and white pictures pushing pushcarts around. little guys -- murray was a giant and a big tough guy and he went down there and he was stronger than the banana cowboys

and he was known as the green go. anything with more than five nickname is -- he would say he could swear in five languages and he famously road from the capital of honduras to cortes on a mule because he wanted to know the country and one of the great expressions was he famously like the honduras banana mule. you cannot know the banana business acute don't understand the banana meal and you can never understand the banana mule. >> judge frank were described him as one of the few states and among business men i have encountered. he has the qualities one usually finds in a great personality. simplicity as well as size. what was simple about this guy? frankfurt can be totally wrong. may be wrong on his choice of words. may not be simplistically but

focus. >> don't be smarter than a problem. go to the jungle and see for yourself. guys to work for him would give him these 100 page report. one sheet on top of the summary and take them and rip-off front sheet and throw the rest -- not the best report i have ever seen. he never wrote anything down. he didn't have a secretary. part of the reason was he didn't want to leave a paper trail because he knew paper trails where people read out loud in court when you are in big trouble. he would see a problem and solve the problem. we didn't talk about it but in honduras, in 1910 he had -- the way the banana business works was it worked with walmart today basically worked by bribes. you had to bribe everybody to do everything and they called them concessions. that is how every company down their work. he had all these bribes.

honduras as a huge debt. honduras hired a guy to build a national railroad and they made the mistake of paying him by the mile. it goes around in circles until he ran out of money. it had a huge debt to british banks and the u.s. government was afraid the british navy would come in and try to get their money back and they didn't want after the monroe doctrine and spanish-american war we were the hegemon in the caribbean and they brought in j. p. morgan, secretary of state brought in j. p. morgan and set up the settlements where it would buy out the debt from britain and refinance it and set j. p. morgan bank officers and collect all the money for the taxes, take out their share and give the rest of government and so he realized this would be the end of his business because he would have to pay taxes and he tried to plead his case and when

philander knox said c. j. p. morgan he said j. p. morgan doesn't know me so he had a simple solution which was the government isn't doing something i want i will change the government. >> this is one of the astonishing parts of this astonishing book. basically 1-man overthrows the government of honduras. that is exactly what happened. >> knox knew that mary was going to do something not good so he got a group of secret service agents to follow and make sure he didn't go to honduras or take mercenary soldiers down so he went to the carrousel bar which i encourage you to get a drink at on royal street in new orleans and he hired be christmas who was the most famous mercenary in the americas at the time. they got this guy who had been for president of honduras and

been thrown out after a civil war and was living in a dive by the mississippi river and put together a mercenary army and a warship -- the secretary of state was following him through the city and they could get out so he went every night to storyville and go to the same house of ill repute every night and they would stay all night and the secret service agents started leaving at 2:00. it is over for the night and there with girls and that is it and they waited several nights until the guys left and took our and christmas who is the real john wayne had a great line where he said welcome, first time i ever heard of anybody going from a whorehouse to a white house. they snuck him out through the bayou to this worship and went to honduras and attacked. the war lasted a month and after a month, manual the neo was made

president of honduras and signed three degrees. murray doesn't pay taxes in honduras for 25 years and he gets 24,000 acres of jungle along the north coast and get reimbursed for the cost of the worship and the guns and everything else. >> is that not a story? there are so many fascinating characters in here. castro's father worked for united fruit. castro went to united fruit school. the harvey oswald worked for united fruit. this guy we christmas, you cannot even believe he is real. >> he is the guy is supposedly turned the word revolution into a verb in term of let's go revolution. his dream as a kid he grew up in louisiana and his dream was to be a railroad engineer which would be like via jet pilot today. he was working on the illinois

central railroad and after serving 18 hours straight went into a bar and started to get drunk. they needed an engineer. they took him and put him in the engine room. he doesn't remember any of this happening the results -- they just saw the train going by full steam with the engineer sound asleep. it was the worst crash in history and he was blackballed so he went to honduras. all these stories of him going to honduras. he went to honduras and got a job with a railroad and wound up being hijacked during the civil war in honduras and gunfighters started and something clicked in his brain. i like this and the ended up fighting in that civil war and became the number 2 guy in

honduras and this unbelievable -- new york times called him a real life dumont hero. >> what was happening? as murray was taking over honduras and other countries, the banana business, advertising -- how did the banana takeoff the way it did? >> united fruit did this brilliant thing. they started sending an agent from the company to new york for people come from ellis island and every time somebody came off the boat they would hand them a banana and say welcome to america so forever they would associate the banana with america which is a con because the bananas were as much imports as people coming off of the boat. there was a conscious decision, i have in here early on when one

of the women's magazines has directions how to peel a banana is hilarious. twist counterclockwise and full. something i should say, the banana that bill the industry that murray built his fortune on. >> this is a tragic thing to me because i love with this banana and i can never have one. talk about great characters. this banana is a character. >> the big mike eagles fix can then they throw the long the decks of ships in piles. it went extinct in nearly 60s. i have little kids and been reading a lot of curious george and never understand why he is so happy and realize, it's more delicious banana. guys in old movies falling down

when they step on banana peels. i have often dropped a banana peel then stepped on and nothing happened. >> this is part of your research? >> i don't go flying. >> i grow bananas in the backyard and put banana peels all over my house. interesting aspect to this is he had a family. two completely different lives in new orleans, buckle up and go down there. >> it is like ultimately he was in four cities it is sort of like every man's fantasy leaguers believe have to study your own marriage but he had a very stable life and home in this giant house and several times a year he gets on a boat and goes to bed and a land where he is king. talk about characters in this book is sort of like everywhere are look was an unbelievable character and one of them was

his wife's father, jake weinberger from galveston, texas and an immigrant from hungary who married a woman, i have seen her birth certificate and the birthplace is mexico. that is how far back we are going. jake was rented a boat as was a peddler who went to central america and traded trinkets which she sold to general stores all over the house and ultimately traded bananas and the first guy who brought bananas to texas. there was an older guy who knew everybody and was a legend in nicaragua, he had been there since the teens 69 please -- >> that did he meet his wife. >> through jake. new orleans doc with these old guys since the beginning of the banana business, one of these a

legendary figures who few are around the old guy loved him because the -- younger fruit par started by pioneers and two or three generations later, harvard business school sitting in boston and here comes murray, who was much more like the guys in the early industry and they always championed him from the beginning. >> they know anything about zemuuray's wife? she was a writer of sorts and i love the title of one of her books. 100 unusual dinners and how to prepare them. maybe it is here at the book fair. >> i tried it. [talking over each other] >> three young kids. come see daddy's banana tree. walking that banana field and

eat this meal. he took over united fruit and tried to run it in a non corporate way. how did that go? >> the story is united fruit almost went to war and almost became a war between guatemala and honduras and the state department called these guys to washington and said you cannot start a war in central america and they had to solve the problem. the solution was -- with stock trade making zemuuray the largest holder of united fruit stock, from 1930. and went to new orleans retire and got in a huge fight, not a

good way to retire. and united fruit's stock plummeted from $100 a share to $10 a share and taking zemuuray's fortune with it and sending ideas to the board in boston and left him off and dismissed him and this company was going under and went to boston to mage -- >> one of the most dramatic parts of this book is this guy. >> and other stockholders getting proxy's. and -- >> call him the fruit peddler or the little guy or the banana man. these were corporate chiefs. embossed an office building, and the company wending -- to save

it. and very thick russian accent, and i'm sorry but i can't understand a word that you say and they all laughed and went storming out of the world as he came back and slammed the mother tablelands that you are all fired. >> great story. i love that story. i don't remember all the board members, was anti-semitism? [talking over each other] >> they needed a house in boston so he went to boston where other united fruit executives live and showing them -- some houses

weren't -- this is in the 1930s so there was a big problem and just decided i will live in the top floor of the ritz-carlton hotel and charge it to the company. he lived in the ritz-carlton in boston in new york near grand central station and in a cottage in honduras. >> after he took over he resurrected, the banana business -- what eventually undid him? he becomes in many ways a though he does some wonderfully heroic things. for me sad to see him diminish as a physical force. what happened? >> his son sam zemuuray jr. was on lease boxing team and got a

graduate degree, and the thing you grow, everything about his family and russia and grandparents focused on this person and this kid, on the army air force leaders the one of the first casualties in the war, killed on a reconnaissance mission in north africa. people who knew him said he was never the same after that. that diminished camelot and the other thing was united fruit was too successful. it got so big in guatemala which zemuuray storage of ran and 70% of the private land, 70% of the private land owned ports in the pacific and shift something out from united fruit's private board.

they delivered the mail. people started looking to the company for things you look to for government. social security, welfare protection. >> they were in school. >> everything. there was a backlash after the second world war and franklin roosevelt and people in south america wanted what we had here and suddenly you had a shake weather a --che guevera looking at this saying what are they doing down here and you have people like pablo writing united fruit and 100 years of solitude which is the story of the united fruit told from the other side of the wire. he lives in the united fruit town and this great poetic justice that people beyond the wire to they don't recognize as humans. in some way they are figures on wallpaper writing history of

united fruit. i think sam zemuuray was smart and realize what happened but almost realized it too late. he is in a game playing the game. people demonize him and demonizing him is like demonizing a football coach from the 1916s about concussions. >> this poem is powerful. there are a million reasons to buy this book and here is another one. he did get involved in a quiet way with a number of jewish causes. some of his money bought the exodus. but his jewish identity is the femoral. >> i am jewish and you grow up thinking america is the promised land especially miami beach is

the promised land. because it is freedom. that is where the energy of a guy like zemuuray came from. grew up in these little jewish towns and were not allowed to compete and they got to america and this ambition over many generations was unleashed and you realize looking at zemuuray of all these freedoms one of the big freedoms was the freedom to stop being jewish. that was the main freedom and i don't think being jewish -- he belonged to a synagogue but i don't think being jewish was important to him. of those his kids were married in churches. there are no jewish the sins of sam the banana man. they are not jewish and mostly central american. for whatever reason early on the first president of israel would become -- looking to raise money in the united states and heard about this jewish banana king.

he went to new orleans and he became an early donor to zionist causes. i don't know how much can be believed and how much is a personal thing but later in the second world war he helped get jews out of europe and when there were jewish refugees people don't remember that after world war ii there were a million jews living in europe and most in camps that were concentration camps converted into displaced persons camps and an effort to smuggle them into palestine and they had to go through a british naval blockade and these leaders from israel went to zemuuray and zemuuray who knew everything about shipping because united fruit had the largest navy in the world and operated out of the report. he told them here is who you got to bribe and he helped and later

on helping to weapons to the israeli army but if you want to go on the internet those search the resolution at united nations that created the state of israel and who voted for the partition of palestine and western europe and all the soviet countries. and all the countries voted for the partition of palestine. very strange fact. >> one of the most captivating characters in nonfiction you think h. h. holmes was interesting, this guy was truly interesting. one of the nice things about the way rich cohen rights is he is not opposed to insert himself in these narratives when i think appropriate. a lot of writers associate themselves when it is totally inappropriate and superfluous. here it is meaningful. he writes to me sam zemuuray's story is the true story of the american dream. not only of the success of the

fright paid for the ambition that led to that success. rich cohen, you have written other good books but this is a masterpiece. [applause] now go buy it out there. [applause] >> thanks. >> not really but go ahead. what do you got? oh, good question. >> you would like to know the meaning of the title. >> when zemuuray died there was an obituary in the new york times. he was 84 years old and the new york times called him "the fish that ate the whale" because he was the little guy who took over the little -- the big guy. he swallowed the behemoth. i haven't really describe it but united fruit had 100,000 employees and a million acres of land. it was a country.

it was the model for all the giant oil companies working in saudi arabia and a guy starting with -- the equivalent of a guy starting pumping gas at a corner station 20 years later. [inaudible] [talking over each other] >> up to the like. this is the last question. we got to get out of this room because the big crowd is coming through. >> did he build the taylor railroad and according to honduras he had a deal where he was supposed to build the railroad to the capital and he reneged on it. any truth to that? >> that created the honduras that. john troutwhine when hired to build the railroad and instead

was paid by the mile and went around in circles around the lowlands and you see bits of that railroad and the the grass. to this day it is the only national capital in the world without rail service. what? >> close to

>> for more information on this and other summer reading lists, visit booktv.org. >> sunday, award-winning author and historian david the truth is our guest on booktv's "in depth."