A NEW READ ON JEWISH LIFE

The United States offers at least as much to those who crave profits as it does to those who follow prophets. Marc Rich falls into the former camp: born in Belgium, he arrived in New York in 1942 with his parents at the age of eight, and soon set his sights on amassing a world-class fortune. He did so, in part, by trading commodities with Iran, Cuba, Angola, and South Africa; his convictions for such dealings and for tax evasion were famously pardoned by Bill Clinton. In The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich (St. Martin’s, October), Daniel Ammann calls the elusive billionaire’s story “both typically American and typically Jewish,” and describes Rich’s willingness to help out the Mossad on occasion through his extensive network of contacts in Iran and Syria.