Tuxedo Park (was Skull & Bones)

[Eugene Coyle]

I have just finished reading Tuxedo Park, a book about Alfred Lee Loomis, a Wall Street lawyer and financier who cashed out before the Depression and turned to science. He built his own scientific lab at Tuxedo Park, where he sponsored and mentored scientists who were or became giants in the years before and after WW II. The book describes him as one of the people who individually won WWII.  I think it describes -- better than does uttering the words "Skull and Bones"-- how the world of connections and relationships (family and otherwise) works at the highest levels of finance and government. Loomis' own mentoring cousin, Hemry Stimpson, became Secretary of War before WW II.  The account of how Loomis, Stimpson, heads of Harvard and MIT parcelled out government dollars to fund the science that created micro-radiation and nuclear bombs is subtle but revealing.  A few insiders decided where the millions of research dollars would be focused -- and who would benefit. Loomis -- in the 1920s --  put together a number of the giant electric utility holding companies that later collapsed financially, but he got out with his fortune not only intact but robust. A thoroughly engaging read, written by a young woman, a family member herself, a Conant, as in president of Harvard Conant.  (Conant with one "n" or two?).  She writes well and tells an inside story and settles scores along the way. It is only as an aside that she notes that Loomis personally, and dubiously, patented a key radar/micro-radiation invention. You can also read into the book, or at least I did, how big science takes care of its favorites, showing money and accolades on some, leaving others on the B list. Loomis went to Andover, Yale, and Harvard Law School.  I did a quick check but haven't seen him listed as a member of Skull and Bones. In any event, although Skull and Bones is a collection of powerful people who look out for each other, I think that at the highest levels of finance there are others playing the game who were not in Skull and Bones but are as connected as (and with) the Bones men are. Gene Coyle