This one didn’t do anything for me. It was like window shopping—mildly entertaining as a distraction, but without leaving anything to show for it. Hard to believe it won a Pulitzer.

The story marches from the hero’s childhood, through his early career years and successes as a young entrepreneur, to his “final downfall” as it says on the dust jacket. But this march follows a perfectly straight path. Martin is restless at his job; he moves to a better job. Martin is bored with his new job; he opens his new business. Martin is unsatisfied with his business, he expands it. He moves on to bigger and bigger enterprises until he moves on to one that is too big. He never faces any substantive opposition and never has a set back. He just moves forward until the end of the story.

What’s missing is conflict and character development. The characters, pretty flat to begin with, are all the same at the end of the book as they are at the beginning. Many just fade away without any mention of them. Martin’s parents, for example, never make an appearance in his adult life. His mother-in-law, who is a major character through the middle part of the book, disappears after he marries her daughter, who literally sleeps through their marriage. Not only do the characters not grow as individuals, every relationship Martin has with another character is static.

There is really nothing to this other than some marginally interesting descriptions of New York City at the turn of the Twentieth Century, and the detailed descriptions of the elaborate attractions of Martin’s hotels. But all that is shine—there’s no shoe.