What I learned from rereading The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen.
When he arrived in America in 1891 at age 14, Zemuri was tall, gangly, and penniless.
When he died in the grandest house in New Orleans 69 years later, he was among the richest, most powerful men in the world.
In between, he worked as a fruit peddler, a banana hauler, a dockside hustler, and the owner of plantations in Central America.
He battled and conquered united Fruit, which was one of the first truly global corporations.
Zemuri's life is a parable of the american dream.
Not history as recorded in the textbooks, but the authentic version, a subterranean saga of kickbacks, overthrows, and secret deals the world as it really works.
This story can shock and infuriate us, and it does.
But I found it invigorating, too.
It told me that the life of the nation was written not only by speech making politicians, but also by street corner boys, immigrant strivers, crazed and driven, some with one good idea, some with thousands willing to go to the ends of the earth to make their vision real.
It meant anyone could write a chapter in that book, be part of the story, vanish into the jungle, and re emerge as a figure of lore.
If you want to understand the spirit of our nation, the good and the bad, you can enroll in college, sign up for classes, take notes, and pay tuition, or you can study the life of Sam the banana man.
That was an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is the fish that ate the whale, the life and times of America's Banana king, and it was written by Rich Cohen.
I had originally read this book many years ago.
It was originally founders episode number 37.
It's one of the best written books that I've read so far for the podcast, and Sam Zemurri's life story may not have an equal, and so I wanted to reread it again and then put it into context with everything else that we've learned over the last, what, 200, almost 230 founder biographies that you and I have gone over since episode number 37.
So I want to jump right into the prologue.
At this point in the story, Samsung Murray is 33 years old, and he is organizing a couple to overthrow the honduran government.
Samson Murray spoke in no accent except when he swore, which was all the time.
He was a big man, six foot three, nothing but muscle and bone in the width of wingspan of a condor.
He had a crisp, no nonsense manner.