Portrait of a Scoundrel

by Nathaniel Benchley

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385128932
• ISBN13: 9780385128933
• Release Date: January 1979
• Publisher: Not Avail
• Length: 300 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Origin of Business High Jinks

I read this several years ago, but I found it a quick read and a quick study of a crude form of business immorality. In Portrait, the main character, Nathaniel Greenlee is obsessed with making it big in any fashion he can in the early days of colonial America (circa 1790-1830). Even going so far as faking his own death. He goes into real estate, hob nobs, if indirectly, with the big names of his time (Washington and Adams) and bases his success on gaining position and land, sometimes under false pretense and sheer false bravado. He takes a post in France, meets and greets with dignitaries solely to obtain his longing for attention and exposure to the finer things in life, but finds this boring and wants action in the new America, once again.Always quick to point out his misunderstood nature, he really does not see the wrong he does or behaves mainly in a narcissitic manner. As the title suggests, Potrait is not only a literal portrait that is made of him, but a symbolic one in that he is flawed to the point of being a scoundrel. But his antics are charming; not vulgar or crass, just the type of things an uncle or cousin would do, but would wind up in the pokey for in the long run.I think this book is a fun one to read, if you like a historic perspective on the misdeeds of a white-collar criminal in early America, and it does this against a backdrop filled with all the names we remember from middle school-high school History class.