Sweet and Low: A Family Story

Written by Rich Cohen

Narrated by Rich Cohen

Sweet and Low is the amazing, bittersweet, hilarious story of an American family and its patriarch, a short-order cook named Ben Eisenstadt who, in the years after World War II, invented the sugar packet and Sweet'N Low, converting his Brooklyn cafeteria into a factory and amassing the great fortune that would destroy his family.

It is also the story of immigrants to the New World, sugar, saccharine, obesity, and the health and diet craze, played out across countries and generations but also within the life of a single family, as the fortune and the factory passed from generation to generation. The author, Rich Cohen, a grandson (disinherited, and thus set free, along with his mother and siblings), has sought the truth of this rancorous, colorful history, mining thousands of pages of court documents accumulated in the long and sometimes corrupt life of the factor, and conducting interviews with members of his extended family. Along the way, the forty-year family battle over the fortune moves into its titanic phase, with the money and legacy up for grabs. Sweet and Low is the story of this struggle, a strange comic farce of machinations and double dealings, and of an extraordinary family and its fight for the American dream.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Release date: Apr 4, 2006
• ISBN: 9781593978907

Rich Cohen

Rich Cohen is a New York Times bestselling author as well as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone. He has written seven books, including Tough Jews, Israel Is Real, and the widely acclaimed memoir Sweet and Low. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Magazine, and Best American Essays. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, three sons, and dog.

Reviews for Sweet and Low

[juliechabon · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What a great story! Ambition and greed and heartbreak and stupidity and pathology and all the evils of humankind packed tragically into a single family story. Every family has its story, and I only wish I had the time and talent to chronicle my family's foibles as skillfully as did Richard Cohen. I share with Mr. Cohen the wish to know my own hidden answers about my family's past. I sympathize with everyone's self-destruction. When the money comes flowing in, it's too easy to avoid doing the hard things. Corruption is easy. Thank you for showing me how the truth can set us free. I especially love your quote..." to be disinherited is to be set free."

[akblanchard_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I wrote this review in May of 2007 for a readers' advisory project. For the sake of the project, I had to keep my official comments uniformly positive.What I said (in May, 2007):Sweet and Low by Rich Cohen. The story of the dysfunctional family behind the Sweet-N-Low sugar substitute empire, as told by a disinherited member of the clan. Clever writing, colorful characters, and a broad perspective on the impact of artificial sweeteners on American culture make this family saga worth reading.What I really thought (in May, 2007):This book kept me reading, with is always a good thing. However, it was not without its flaws. The author is writing about his own family, but since he grew up not in Brooklyn but in Glencoe, IL, there's a lot he doesn't know. For example, Cohen doesn't know his "Uncle Marvelous's" level of involvement in the embezzlement that almost brought down the company. Cohen (who is also the author of a book called Tough Jews, about Jewish gangsters), would like to come across as a street-smart guy, but that's hard to do when you're from the ultra-wealthy North Shore area of suburban Chicago. Cohen does offers some interesting insights into the the impact of artificial sweeteners (and "the dieting craze in America") on American culture. But, if anything, the perspective is a little too broad. His digressions on dieting, organized crime, and immigrant Jewish culture, and the proper running of a family business, go on a little too long. There's too much stuffed into the book, and way, way too many footnotes and similes, many of them irrelevant.What I think now (Dec., 2013):Cohen has some interesting things to say about the way families work.On page 7, he has the following exchange with his uncle Marvin:[Uncle Marvin] said, "This is not easy for me. You children were always a big part of us. And yet it's not so unusual either, this kind of split in the family."[Rich Cohen] said, "I guess it's why so few people know their second cousins."Toward the end of the book, Cohen writes, "So this is how it ends, how cousins grow apart, this is how the members if the family have children and you have children and the children grow up as strangers, who have children, until any connection is lost. So this is how the planet is populated. This is how Brooklyn continues". (p. 262).These observations have stayed with me all these years, perhaps because I've seen family splits ("few people know[ing] their second cousins") happen more than once.

[sadiebabie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a very strange story - the dark secrets and family feuds behind a seemingly mundane sweetener manufacturer. I’m not sure what I expected with regards to this book – it had been on my to-read list for so long I’d forgotten why I’d added it in the first place. But it didn’t disappoint. I’ll admit there were a few times when I thought the technical details about the industry could have been scaled down, & at times there just wasn’t enough dirt dishing for my liking. But as it was written by a member of the family I can understand why there wasn’t more muck spread, & this was balanced out a little by the honesty that was there. I remember as I read being impressed by Cohen’s ability to interpret his family. Not that these interpretations are necessarily right, as they are just his own take on things, but because of the amount of insight it must take to be objective on any level about the way members of your own family treat one another. It stopped the book being either a bitter attack on relations nor a soppy sentimental dirge. The balance was really fairly spot on.

[loud_librarian_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Rich Cohens' unlikely history of the worlds most popular sugar substitute unfolds like a greek tragedy. What makes it particularly fascinating is the authors personal family connection to this poignant story. It will leave a bad aftertaste in your mouth...but in a good way...if that is possible.

[narshkite · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What drama, what intrigue, what pathology! I always say that someone needs to tap my family for disertation material, but after reading this book I realize we are practically the Brady clan. The interpersonal drama is fascinating and sad and funny, but it is really only the tip of the iceberg. This book is a wonderful historical document of a certain kind of immigrant experience. It is also a blast to read. After finishing I immediately ordered another Cohen book, "Tough Jews." I can't wait to learn about the other side of this man's family.

[pbadeer · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was one of the first books added to my wishlist when I first joined LibraryThing. Unfortunately, I do not know how I found it and/or who recommended it, but I’ve always been on the lookout for a copy of it. When I finally came across a first edition, I snatched it up and couldn’t wait to tackle it. Boy was I disappointed.First, the dust jacket descriptions and comic book style art puts the title in a far more lighthearted framework than it actually is. Although well written with some areas of humor and outright guffaw inducing one liners, the overarching narrative is a very serious, and debilitatingly detailed, outline of the birth, growth and bumpy roads of both Sweet ‘N Low (the pink packeted artificial sweetener) and the family who built it. Upon finishing it, I felt somewhat deceived (even my 11 year old daughter looked at the cover and said it looked like a fun read. Moral: Don’t judge a book by its cover) and definitely disappointed.If it had just been a memoir of the family, the company and the resulting disinheritance of one line of it (the author’s line), I think it would have had great potential. But admittedly, the corporate story wouldn’t be complete without an understanding of its highs and lows. Unfortunately, so much time and effort was spent detailing the “scandal” with thorough use of quotes, dialogues and analysis from court documents that the real story gets lost. Maybe the author’s point was to create this sluggish section in order to undermine any sympathy the reader may have been developing for the key players – it wasn’t until after this played out that his family was disinherited (and don’t worry, that’s not a spoiler – it’s one of the comic book frames on the dust jacket). But by the end, I held no sympathy for any of the players – including the ones who had been disinherited.

[maggiereads · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ben Eisenstadt is “part of that special breed of Americans—orphans, mongrels, mutts—responsible for no one but himself.” Growing up in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn, eight-year-old Ben works in his uncle’s tea bag factory from sunrise to sunset. This tough kid, with slouch-brimmed hat and chewed toothpick, eventually becomes the inventor of Sweet ‘N Low.While working, Ben attends school and eventually becomes a lawyer. He attracts beautiful wife, Betty, ready to ride on the coat tails of his future success. Unfortunately, the Great Depression hits and Ben faces work as kitchen help in Betty’s family business. He enjoys local fame as the only busboy/lawyer in New York.It’s in one of these shabby family diners where the idea to package sugar starts. Betty complains about the mess involved in sugar dispensers and bowls. The dispensers clog easily and the bowls are unsanitary because of the shared spoon usage. Ben asks, “What if the sugar was packaged separately, in little pouches?”He purchases one of his uncle’s old tea bag machines and sets it up for sugar. We could stop here, with Ben’s success; unfortunately, Ben did not patent his machine. Hoping for a contract, he invites the leaders of Domino’s sugar to view his contraption. After two weeks of waiting, Ben finally discovers they are packing sugar, but with their own machines.Sweet and Low by Rich Cohen mixes memoir, humor, and history as the story of his family’s business unfolds. This unauthorized true story, as seen through the eyes of a disinherited family member, reminds me of the cast in Neil Simon's play, "Lost in Yonkers": a Jewish family complete with one neurotic mother, miserly father, golden-boy son, recluse daughter, and a daughter with moxie, or in this case, Cohen’s mother.The author tells this incredible story in three parts. The first part consists of a brief history of Brooklyn and Sweet ‘N Low’s humble beginnings. The second part relates how mobsters infiltrate the factory and launder millions of dollars through phony invoices. The last part concentrates on the disinheritance of the Cohen family and Sweet ‘N Low’s market loss.Cohen, contributing editor of Rolling Stones Magazine, has waited all his life to tell his family’s story. Just like the product that made his grandfather rich, the story is sweet with a little bitter aftertaste.

[rivkat_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This entertaining book is the story of Cohen’s extended family, which founded the Sweet and Low business; Cohen also delves into the history of Brooklyn, sugar, dieting, and related topics, but very casually. Basically this is the story of a family that grew rich off of the idea of packaging sugar, and then sugar substitute, to replace sugar bowls and canisters that seemed unsanitary. The factory got caught up in a tax evasion/embezzlement/Mafia-related scandal, surviving weakened but still going, and Cohen’s branch of the family was disinherited, for reasons that Cohen can only ultimately gesture at, but the pleasure is in the telling.