All through reading Sweet and Low: A Family Story (FSG, 2006) I was continually struck by how well the tone of the telling of this appealing memoir – breezy and dispassionately compassionate, if that makes any sense at all - matched the tale that was being unfolded. Cohen could have chosen to write this morality tale about the fate of the American Dream of wealth and happiness in a heavyhanded, oh-poor-me style. Instead, he handles the ups and downs of his family’s fortune and relationships with a kind of humorous dispassion. (It’s as though he’s saying, “okay, it IS my family, many of them turn out to be really nuts, I don’t deny it, but let’s just enjoy watching things play out and not get too involved in the hurly-burly of it all.” ) Cohen’s maternal grandfather came up with the idea for the artificial sweetener Sweet’N Low (remember those bilious pink packets? The cover of this book is cleverly done in the same pink). As Cohen relates, Ben Eisenstadt makes a fortune, but the next generation finds success slipping away when the government and the Mafia become involved, and Ben’s widow and children find themselves at odds with one another after his death. A loving (though ultimately sad) story, most engagingly told.

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