| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Mark I. Gelfand. Trustee for a City: Ralph Lowell of Boston. Boston: Northeastern University Press. 1998. Pp. xvii, 322. $35.00.

Few names, if any, better summon up the image of the Boston Brahmin or "Proper Bostonian" than that of Lowell. Ralph Lowell (1890–1978) added relatively little to his family's achievements, but Mark I. Gelfand offers an engaging account of the life of the man who came to be known as "Mr. Boston." Lowell's business accomplishments would never merit a biography, nor would his leadership qualities, but Gelfand successfully uses "biography to examine change and continuity in one of the nation's most fascinating cities" (p. xi). 1

The book is divided into two parts: a chronological account and a thematic section. The shorter first portion portrays Lowell's family and life up to 1940 and is an interesting account of his experiences at Harvard, in the service 1917–1918, and in the Boston financial world of the 1920s and 1930s. Lowell approached his fiftieth birthday with neither great wealth nor personal accomplishment. It was only upon inheriting the position of sole trustee of the Lowell Institute and assuming the top post at the Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Company that Lowell came to know local fame and a measure of personal financial achievement. At this point, Gelfand organizes his account around the development of the various educational and cultural institutions that Lowell served, the focus being the period from World War II to 1970. . . .

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