| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Kenneth Lipartito and Carol Heher Peters. Investing for Middle America: John Elliott Tappan and the Origins of American Express Financial Advisors. New York: Palgrave. 2001. Pp. x, 268. $27.95.

John Elliott Tappan may not have the same name recognition as Charles Merrill of Merrill Lynch, recently the subject of a biography by Edwin J. Perkins (Wall Street to Main Street: Charles Merrill and Middle-Class Investors [1999]). One could argue, however, that Merrill was simply following in the footsteps of earlier innovators, including Tappan. The latter founded Investors Syndicate (IS) in 1894. It was renamed Investors Diversified Services (IDS) in 1949, and then took the name American Express Financial Advisors in 1994, ten years after having been bought by its eponymous parent firm. 1

Carol Heher Peters, this book's coauthor, is Tappan's great-granddaughter. On one level, the book is an uncritical and celebratory telling of his life and work, an impression that the straightforward prose tends to amplify. (The book is pitched to a popular rather than an academic audience.) Tappan makes a good subject for such a biography. He was a recognizable American type: the hard-working, thrifty, respectable, and family-oriented white Protestant midwesterner who succeeded in business. Like Henry Ford, to whom the authors compare him, Tappan was also a visionary who had a deep affinity with the common citizens of rural America. . . .

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