Words: Joseph Bullmore
There’s this lovely little bit in Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe’s novel about the brash tycoons who swaggered around 1980s New York, where a character describes $100 million as a “unit”. Why a unit? “A unit, of course, is a starting point.” Nine figures in your bank account is just the beginning. That sort of shtick sums up the attitude of the Steinbergs, a real family that lived on such an outrageous and grand scale that they could have walked out the pages of Wolfe’s book.
The Steinbergs – brothers Saul and Bobby – made their name as swashbuckling corporate raiders who, in the words of one writer, “terrified companies with attacks on their stock”. They were the Jewish Kennedys – that’s how they saw themselves – and their late 20th century glory days involved an expensive schedule of helicopters for breakfast, jewellery for lunch, and cocaine for dinner. A gripping new podcast, The Just Enough Family, charts the clan’s incredible history. With an eye for lavish detail, the podcast host Ariel Levy gets the surviving family members to recount just how much cash they burned on luxury living. It’s a wild ride.
The Steinberg brothers made their mark in the 1960s with an office furniture leasing business, and with some nifty financing, managed to take over a giant insurance company called Reliance. Saul had suddenly joined the ranks of America’s richest men, and promptly adopted the lifestyle of a central Asian dictator.
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