Ever wondered what it’s like to have a couple of cosmos with your favorite actor, or two drams of whiskey with a Silicon Valley legend? That’s what we’re going to be doing here in this new column from The Free Press. Each week, a writer will invite a newsmaker, a trendsetter, or a power broker for—at least—two drinks. Because as everyone knows, the conversation really gets interesting after you order a second round.
Kicking off the series is veteran Free Presser Joe Nocera, a man who knows his way around a wine cellar. He called up Andrew Ross Sorkin, who sealed his reputation as America’s greatest chronicler of Wall Street this week with his epic new book about the 1929 crash—and they met at a bar where one of the financiers involved wrote his suicide note.
We were going to meet for drinks at the Plaza Hotel, Andrew Ross Sorkin and I. Its dining room was the power-lunch spot in 1920s New York, and it plays a prominent role in his new book, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation. It’s where the Wall Street pooh-bahs who serve as his main characters meet to dine, to conspire, to entertain new ways to make money, having no idea that the Great Crash of 1929 is right around the corner.
But on the morning of, he texted me. “Better idea!” he wrote. “Drinks at the Sherry-Netherland! Where Jesse Livermore shot himself! More dramatic.”
Indeed.
