495. Bitcoin: A Mania, a Fraud, and a Bubble?

BROWDERBOOKS

Great news!  The new edition of my nonfiction title Fascinating New Yorkers: Power Freaks, Mobsters, Liberated Women, Creators, Queers and Crazies, will be released on February 14.  Why a new edition?  Because the original publisher, Black Rose Writing, declined to renew its contract and continue selling it.  The rights have reverted to me, and since it got good reviews, I have faith in it.  The new edition is updated in facts and has a much more colorful and appealing cover.  Even if you have the old edition, keep in mind that the new one will make a splendid gift.  It will be available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble in both paperback and e-book formats.

       BITCOIN:  A  MANIA,  A  FRAUD, 

                    AND  A  BUBBLE?

1 Bitcoin = $33,833.50.  So the Internet informs me. But what is Bitcoin?  A cryptocurrency, says the New York Times.  But what is that?  

"A decentralized digital currency," says Wikipedia, meaning that it has no bank or other administrator; those who use it are evidently on their own.  And there are at least three million users, probably many more.  It was invented in 2008 by a person or persons unknown using the name Satoshi Nakamoto.   

An invented currency?  Again, I ask why?  I'm perfectly satisfied with my US dollars, though I never have enough of them -- who does?  The dollar's reign as the preferred international currency continues, even though the controversial nutritionist Gary Null, in a departure from advocating healthy food, predicted its demise -- one of his many predictions that have failed to come to pass.  And his is only one of many such failed predictions.

There are Bitcoin billionaires, I am told, which makes me think of this as an irrational fad, a wild speculation, and a mass delusion, akin to the tulip mania in seventeenth-century Holland, and the Mississippi Bubble in eighteenth-century France, when people paid ever higher prices for stock in a company with exclusive privileges to develop the France's vast holdings in the Mississippi Valley.  In time the tulip bubble burst, and in 1720 the Mississippi Bubble did the same, the stock price plummeted, and the Scottish adventurer John Law, who had organized it all, had to flee the country.  

The mysterious Mr. Nakamoto, if he/she/it exists, may not share Law's fate, since he/she/it remains anonymous, whereas Law was a public figure, sought after even by countesses desperate for shares of stock.  But some investors in Bitcoin have a unique problem; they have a fortune in it, but they've forgotten the password to unlock the hard drive containing the key to their digital wallet.  Users have ten guesses, and if none of them provides the password, their fortune is seized and encrypted forever.  Whoever devised this crazy scheme is, in my mind, diabolical, and the users turned losers elicit from me a wisp of sympathy and the taunting pronouncement "I told you so!" or "What did you expect?" 

The whole Bitcoin mania I find crazy, deluded, lamentable, and inexplicable.  If someone can explain it to me as something other than a bubble, I'll listen, but their explanation had better be good.  In the meantime I'll hoard and caress my dollars, however limp and frayed  they may be.  Money is fiction, of course; I've done a whole post on the subject: #336, "Money: Is it even real?"  But the dollar fiction is free from encryption, time-honored, and less shaky than any other.  I'll stick with it until something better comes along, and it won't be Bitcoin.

©  2021  Clifford Browder

494. New York Won't Die

BROWDERBOOKS

Forbidden Brownstones has received its first review.

If you love historical fiction, as I do, and the opportunity to learn more about a different time period, different social mores, and the struggle for acceptance when you are different, you will absolutely adore this story. I learned so much reading this and enjoyed the plot and its characters immensely. I can highly recommend this read. -- Five-star editorial review for Readers' Favorite by Grant Leishman.

 

It is available from Amazon for $16.95 (paperback) or $5.99 (e-book).  And from Barnes & Noble for $16.95 (paperback), and from WiDo Publishing for $15.75 (paperback).

                       NEW  YORK  WON'T  DIE

Yes, it's smitten by the pandemic, frozen in lockdown.  Yes, residents have fled, some of them vowing never to return.  Yes, tourists are staying away, with disastrous results for travel agencies, hotels, and restaurants.   Yes, small businesses are failing;  RETAIL  SPACE  AVAILABLE  signs have proliferated, and my barbershop and Philip Marie, one of my favorite restaurants, are gone.  Yes, the city and state -- like all cities and states -- are in dire need of federal aid, without which they will have to reduce essential services.  All in all, a grim situation, worse than any I that I have personally experienced, and my experience goes back decades.  But New York won't die.  It's tough, resourceful, resilient, and has survived a lot of crises in the past.  Consider: 

Cholera, 1832

Businesses shut down, the middle class fled, the slums suffered, and coffin-laden carts rumbled through the streets.  Steamboats refused to dock in the city, dumped New York-bound travelers in the wilds of Westchester county.  Cholera was a mystery and a terror, with no known cause or cure. But at the summer's end mortality declined, the city reopened, steamboats returned, business recovered.  Cholera hit again at intervals, but never so disastrously.

The Civil War, 1861

"Grass will grow in the streets of New York!"  So warned the leaders and merchants of the South, convinced that, once the Southern states seceded, the loss of their business would cripple the city's economy.  Yes, the city lost their business, but the government needed supplies --food, tents, rifles, ammunition -- and the city's economy boomed, merchants profited, Wall Street flourished.  Like it or not, war is good for business.

Influenza, 1918-1919

Like cholera before it, flu hit the city hard, starting in August 1918, and there was no known cure.  The sick and their homes were quarantined, but there was no general lockdown.  Schools stayed open, but at the end of the day pupils were told to go straight home and not mingle with crowds.  Schoolchildren were safer in school than on the streets or in crowded tenements, the health commissioner insisted.  Theaters and stores stayed open, but with strict regulations regarding ventilation and other sanitary conditions, and with hours staggered and reduced.  Masks were not obligatory, but coughing or sneezing without covering your face was made a misdemeanor.  By November the epidemic was beginning to decline, restrictions were removed, and the city celebrated the end of World War I on the eleventh, when the mayor led a parade down Fifth Avenue that was showered with confetti.  The health commissioner insisted that New York had done better than other big East Coast cities, and he may well have been right.

Near Bankruptcy, 1975

In the mid-1970s the city faced a crisis of a different kind.  It was debt-laden, dirty, crime-ridden, with middle-class residents fleeing to the suburbs.  Like mayors before him, Mayor Abrham Beame had indulged in financial gimmickry that simply postponed for a while the inevitable reckoning.  In April a crisis had been avoided, when the state gave financial aid to the city, but on condition that the city hand over its financial management to the state -- a loss of independence that would plague the city for years.  Then on October 19, 1975, another crisis loomed: at 4 p.m. that day the city risked falling into default; in short, it would be bankrupt.         

        New York City bankrupt!  Hundreds of banks financially tied to the city would fail, said some, though others thought the city should be allowed to fail and experience the penalty for its misdeeds.  "You New Yorkers..." intoned a friend of mine in Washington, indignant that New Yorkers expected others to bail them out.  He was convinced that New York would, and should, be permanently reduced to minor status as a city.  

        "New York City is not going to go bankrupt!"  So an employee at my bank assured his friends, as he told me years later.  "Buy the city's bonds at these prices," he urged.  "They're the bargain of a lifetime."  With risk of default, the bonds were selling at an all-time low.  Investors were desperate to get out of them.  

        So who was right -- my Washington friend or the bank employee?The bank employee, of course.  At the very last minute the teachers' union, hitherto hostile to helping the city out, agreed to save the city from default by investing its pension funds.  But President Gerald Ford's refusal to help the city was imprinted forever in the minds of New Yorkers by the headline of the New York Daily News of October 30, 1975: FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.  It may have helped cost him the presidency, when he lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976.  Ford himself thought so.

        New York has survived a lot of crises -- I won't add 9/11 to the list -- and it will survive this one, too.  But be patient, observe distancing, and wear your mask.  Don't become a statistic.  Stay safe and enjoy the "normal" times to come.  But who wants New York normal?  We want it to become again its wild, crazy, supremely creative, and totally abnormal self.

©  2021  Clifford Browder

493. Bad Boys

BROWDERBOOKS

My new historical novel Forbidden Brownstones is about the struggle of a young black man to realize his dream of living in a brownstone and even possessing it -- a fantasy that becomes an obsession facing many obstacles in racially prejudiced nineteenth-century New York.

 

It is now available from Amazon for $16.95 (paperback) or $5.99 (e-book).  And from Barnes & Noble for $16.95 (paperback), and from WiDo Publishing for $15.75 (paperback).

                             Bad  Boys

They're arrogant, insolent, aggressive, and mean by nature.  Gifted too, perhaps.  Primarily a male tendency; in my own life I've only encountered males, though I'm sure females of the species exist.

In my college class there was one, wiry.   He was cocky, good-looking, muscular, aggressive, and disliked by most of his classmates.  Yet the girl he went with, and perhaps married, was one of the nicest, most likable girls on campus.  Which brings us to another point: bad boys make out.

Recently I rewrote an article about the writer Norman Mailer that had been deleted from my nonfiction title Fascinating New Yorkers.  I described Mailer as the literary bad boy of his age.  What qualified him for this role?  A host of things.

• He was by nature aggressive, always in a fight (usually when drunk), and relished it.
• He stabbed his second wife twice, and when someone tried to help her as she lay on the floor bleeding, Mailer yelled, "Let the bitch die!"
• Angry because writer Gore Vidal had given one of his books a bad review, he assaulted Vidal verbally and physically when they met to appear on a TV show together.
• A foe of feminists, he dismissed women's writing as "Quaintsy Goysy, too dykily psychotic, crippled, creepish, fashionable, frigid, outer-Baroque."

Yes, clearly a literary bad boy.  But they come in many forms.  The sixteenth-century painter Caravaggio, renowned for stunning light-and-dark effects, saw fit to decamp from Italy for Malta, because in an argument he had killed a man.  Hollywood has had a surfeit of them, both onscreen and off.  The unruly behavior of actor Errol Flynn was the delight of columnists, since he provided them with endless copy, while onscreen he was dashing, bold, passionate, and galant.

Recently I've been playing CDs from my deceased partner Bob's collection, recordings of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Three Penny Opera, especially the song "Mack the Knife."  Mack is a thief and a murderer -- the ultimate in bad boys -- yet his girlfriend adores him and he is respected and feared in the seedy underworld.  No doubt because, at least for a while, he gets away with it.

Are there bad boys in finance?  All over the place.  In several posts I chronicled the career of a young New Yorker, Martin Shkreli, a financial hotshot characterized by boyish looks, online self-promotion with hours of livestreaming, and a teasing smirk.  This boy wonder had a way of starting one company, getting into ruinous debt, then starting another company and using its investors' money to pay off the first company's debt: a sort of Ponzi scheme.  Some of his enterprises involved pharmaceuticals.  When he raised the price of a drug from $13.50 to $750, he was reviled as the most hated man in America, and relished it.  It made him that much more attractive to women, he insisted, and he was probably right.  If a girl asked him for a date, he warned her that she would have to get in line, and the line was long.  

If we don't hear much about Mr. Shkreli now, it's because in 2017 the feds indicted him, not for the drug price outrage, which was not illegal, but for misrepresenting his assets to investors.  Convicted at age 34, he was hauled off to prison, and at last report was launching a lawsuit from durance vile against someone whom he claimed had slandered him.

Are there bad boys in politics?  Of course.  I have characterized this financial whiz kid as a smaller version of a noted and controversial political figure of our time.  Need I say more?

Once, having become the pen pal of a gay inmate in North Carolina convicted of child molestation and crime against nature -- charges that I thought inappropriate and overly severe -- I hoped that, however belatedly, I might become the bad boy of my college class.  But when I mentioned this by e-mail to an older woman on the staff of the college alumni magazine, she replied, "Oh no!  We've got murderers and international drug dealers."  Which immediately and forever shot down my aspirational folly.  With competition like that, I didn't stand a chance.

©  2021 Clifford Browder

492. Books About New York

                 BOOKS  ABOUT  NEW  YORK

Print books make fantastic gifts.  They don't wither or droop, go stale or out of fashion, affect your weight or your cholesterol, or get lost in the Internet.  They just lie there, marvels of patience, waiting to be read.  And if their content annoys you, you can hurl them across the room.

The following books are available.  Nonfiction titles are listed first, then fiction, with a brief description and reviews.  The most recent books appear at the start.

                     NONFICTION

3.  New Yorkers:  A Feisty People Who Will Unsettle, Madden, Amuse and Astonish You

                                 

Finalist in the 14th National Indie Excellence Awards, 2020, Regional Nonfiction: Northeast.

Listed among the Best Independent Books in the September 3 and 10, 2020, issues of the LibraryBub newsletter, and included in a LibraryBub press release picked up by NBC and CBS.

A quirky memoir by a longtime resident who loves his crazy but profoundly creative city, with glances at that city’s fascinating history, and weird facts to surprise visitors and residents alike.  

A fun book, with a few grim moments. 

For those who love (or hate) New York, have lived there or would like to, or are just plain curious about the city and its residents, past and present.

Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Reviews

Tourists and those new to the city will most appreciate this light, entertaining look at the Big Apple. --  Publishers Weekly.

New York is the most exciting city in the world. It's unique and reading "New Yorkers" is the next best thing to actually living there!  --  Midwest Book Review.

This immersive exploration of the city and its denizens etches a vivid portrait of “what it is to be a New Yorker ... our past and present glories and horrors.” —  Kirkus Reviews.

Thousands of books have been written about New York City, but this one stands out. -- Blue Ink Review.

2.  Fascinating New Yorkers: Power Freaks, Mobsters, Liberated Women, Creators, Queers and Crazies    

                       

Finalist in the 2019 International Book Awards, Biography.

Biographical sketches of colorful people who lived or died in New York.  Included are a prostitute’s daughter who got to know two ex-kings and a future emperor; a naughty archbishop; and a serial killer who terrorized the city.

A good read for anyone who wants to know more about the hustlers, manipulators, artists, celebrities, and crooks that have frequented The City That Never Sleeps.  You may be shocked or angered, but you won’t be bored. 

See also my post #353, "Fascinating New Yorkers: Why and How I Wrote It."

Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Reviews

Readers will enjoy Clifford Browder’s lively, descriptive writing. Fans of non-fiction and more recent history will really appreciate the research that he put into these pages.  —  Editorial review for Reader Views by Paige Lovitt.

There’s something for everyone here in this collection of profiles, and it serves as a source of inspiration for readers who love NYC. — Editorial review for U.S. Review of Books by Gabriella Tutino.

I couldn't put this down and read it in one sitting! — Five-star editorial review for NetGalley by Cristie Underwood. 

1. No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World   (Not available from the author now; sold out.  Available otherwise, as stated below.)

                           

                               

Winner for regional nonfiction in the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Awards, 2016.

First place for Travel in the Reader Views Literary Awards for 2015-2016.

Finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016.

Memoir, history, and travel book all rolled into one.  Its stories include alcoholics, abortionists, and grave robbers; the Gay Pride parade; peyote visions; and the author’s mugging in Central Park.

If you love (or hate) New York — its people, its doings, its craziness — this is the book for you.  

Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Reviews

I thoroughly enjoyed No Place for Normal: New York by Clifford Browder and highly recommend it to all fans of entertaining short stories and lovers of New York City.  —  Editorial review for Reader Views Literary Awards by Sheri Hoyte.

To read No Place for Normal: New York is to enter into Cliff Browder’s rich and engaging sixty years of adult life in New 

York. — Five-star reader review for Amazon by Michael P. Hartnett. 

If you want wonderful inside tales about New York, this is the book for you.  A refreshing view on NYC that will not disappoint. — Five-star reader review for Amazon by Bill L.  

                         cliffbrowder@verizon.net

  FICTION

5.  Forbidden Brownstones

The fifth title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York.  

A young black man's obsession with brownstones, where the white gentry live, and his dream of living in one and even  possessing it, a yearning inciting thoughts of arson and murder. 

For anyone who wants to be immersed in another age and experience its dramatic events, scandals, and prejudices.

Reviews

If you love historical fiction, as I do, and the opportunity to learn more about a different time period, different social mores, and the struggle for acceptance when you are different, you will absolutely adore this story. I learned so much reading this and enjoyed the plot and its characters immensely. I can highly recommend this read. -- Five-star editorial review for Readers' Favorite by Grant Leishman.

Overall, with Forbidden Brownstones, author Clifford Browder delivers an articulately, authentic and entertaining culmination of history and fiction ingeniously traversing a time in New York’s history within which, unfortunately, prejudice for black people abounded on many levels, even from Irish immigrants. I thoroughly enjoyed this adult-themed read; the story flowed easily, while the narrative provided as much food for thought, as it did historical tidbits. Additionally, as a character-driven story, I found myself engrossed from the story’s outset, as the interesting characters both historical and fictional, especially that of Junius were brought into focus. I heartily recommend this book as well as the others in the series they are all well worth the read. -- Editorial review for Reedsy Discovery by Lisa Brown-Gilbert.

The development of the characters and the settings are expertly done, reeling in and hooking the reader without a hint of contrivance. It simply happens. The story throws us back into an era of highs and lows; beauty and excesses alongside prejudice, riots, and depression. I was charmed by Junius as a first-person character. His dreams, his strength of character and integrity, his weaknesses and the clarity to recognize them; all this and more gives you a story that kept me turning the pages. A highly recommended read! 

Sublime Line: “Forbidden Brownstones is an addictive novel that will charm, entertain, and mesmerize you; five stars for this wonderful, compelling read.” -- Five-star editorial review for Sublime Book Review.

No matter what journey you’re looking to undertake, this author provides love, drama, mystery, action, death, prejudice, and unforgettable emotion. —  Editorial review for Reader Views by Amy Lignor.

Forbidden Brownstones, a historical fiction novel by Clifford Browder, is a must-read. And if I had anything to say about it, a miniseries or movie would do it justice. This is the first time I have given a book a five…. I could feel the movement, the jazz of the black culture where characters swayed with the rhythm of life after years of slavery facing adversity no white person in the book could ever understand or even thought to ask. — Five-star editorial review for Reedsy Discovery by Karina Holosko.

Not only is the story unique, but the writing is superb. Browder's work flows, and the story is well organized. The vocabulary is impressive. -- Editorial review for the US Review of Books by Toby Berry.

Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and WiDo Publishing.

4.  The Eye That Never Sleeps

                         

                                    

The fourth title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York.  

The strange friendship of a private detective and the bank robber he has been hired to apprehend, climaxed by a violent  confrontation in the dark midnight vaults of a bank.

For readers who like well-researched historical fiction, and who love a fast-paced detective story set in turbulent nineteenth-century New York.

Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Reviews

A classically told detective novel that creates a web of intrigue, while giving the reader a tour of a bygone era of America through the filter of New York City. – Editorial review by Sublime Book Review.

The Eye That Never Sleeps is a great midnight mystery to enjoy and I highly recommended it to all crime and mystery-loving fans. – Four-star editorial review for Readers’ Favorite by Tiffany Ferrell.

Enter the seamier haunts of mid-nineteenth century NYC. One man is married, honorable. The other is an adept planner of felonies, and sneakily vindictive.  Follow them around for a while and you decide which one bests the other in a dangerous game. — Five-star editorial review for NetGalley by Jan Tangen.

3.  Dark Knowledge

                      

The third title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York.  

Determined to discover if anyone in his family was involved in the pre-Civil War slave trade, young Chris Harmony meets denials and evasions, then threats, and a key witness is murdered.  What price must Chris pay to learn the painful truth and proclaim it?

For lovers of historical fiction who like a fast-paced mystery combined with a coming-of-age story. 

Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Reviews

Clifford Browder definitely managed to recreate the vibe and feel of that era.  This is a great read! — Five-star editorial review for Readers’ Favorite by Gisela Dixon.

Thoroughly enjoyed this historical book! I recommend to read!  Facts accurate! — Five-star reader review for Goodreads by LisaMarie.

Overall this novel is worth reading and I highly recommend it. — Five-star reader review for Barnes & Noble by ladynicolai.

2.  Bill Hope: His Story

  

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The second title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York.  

Young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a street kid turned pickpocket, including his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and his escape from another prison in a coffin.  In the end he faces betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder.  

For readers who want to share the adventures of a likable street kid who fights his way out of crime and squalor to achieve something that he hopes will be better.

Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. 

Reviews

A real yarn of a story about a lovable pickpocket who gets into trouble and has a great adventure.  A must read. — Five-star reader review for Amazon by Nicole W. Brown.

Despite the story is told in a sort of flash language it's an easy read — and very enjoyable! —  Four-star review for LibraryThing Early Reviewers by viennamax.

An easy read about a hard life.  Interesting characters, a bustling city, poverty, privilege, crime, injustice combine to create a captivating tale.  —  Five-star reader review for Goodreads by John.

1. The Pleasuring of Men

                         

The first title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York. 

Tom Vaughan, a respectably raised young man, chooses to become a male prostitute, then falls in love with his most difficult client.  Through a series of encounters he matures, till an unexpected act of violence provokes a final resolution.  Gay romance, historical.

For anyone interested in the imagined gay underworld of late 1860s New York. 

For an imaginary interview with Tom and other characters, see post #320 in my blog: “Interview: A Male Prostitute and His Clients.”

Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Reviews

  The novel is deftly drawn with rich descriptions, a rhythmic balance of action, dialogue, and exposition, and a nicely understated plot. —  Editorial review for Barnes & Noble by Sean Moran.

  The detail Browder brings to this glimpse into history is only equaled by his writing of credible and interesting characters.  Highly recommended. — Five-star reader review for Goodreads by Nan Hawthorne.

  Altogether this is a tale encompassing both sophisticated wit and humour, and yet the subject matter is the grotty underbelly of society as enacted by its leading citizens.  It is absolutely delightful.  Five Bees. —  Gerry Burnie's Reviews.

Clifford Browder

Author of historical novels and nonfiction relating to New York City.

blog: https://cbrowder.blogspot.com

website: https://www.cliffbrowderbooks.com