The E-Sylum:  Volume 9, Number 20, May 14, 2006, Article 5

FRANKEL's 1933 DOUBLE EAGLE BOOK REVIEWED BY WALL STREET JOURNAL

The Wall Street Journal published a review by Jason Goodwin of
Alison Frankel's new book "Double Eagle" on Saturday, May 13:

"Ms. Frankel steers her reader through a world of coin fairs,
backroom deals, gossip and meticulous scholarship. The result is
a thriller-like narrative that tacks swiftly back and forth among
the principal players.

We meet dubious dealers -- "a squat, balding redhead who wore
thick-rimmed glasses, cheap suits, and a perpetual sneer" -- and
obsessive collectors. There is the flamboyant coin dealer Jay Parrino,
"a tough-guy contestant in coin-dealing's long-running pageant of
self-aggrandizement," and his would-be nemesis, Jack Moore, a former
truck driver who prods the Secret Service into a double-eagle sting
operation but then ends up mired in his own legal troubles."

"Above all, Ms. Frankel immerses her reader in the Florentine world
of dealers and collectors, the interplay of rivalry, passion and
mutual trust that animates the tiny handful of people -- almost all
of them men -- for whom a Brasher doubloon or an Indian head nickel
matters more than anything else in the world."

Ms. Frankel builds her story with a sure touch. At the end, we find
the double eagle still enveloped in a mist of legal doubts, trailing
the very image of slippery value that Teddy Roosevelt had been eager
to banish from U.S. currency when he commissioned it. The 1933 double
eagle still may not be legal to own. And what, you might ask, is it
really worth? Seven million dollars -- or 10 years in jail?"

To read the complete review (subscription required) see:
Full Story

  Wayne Homren, Editor

	coinbooks.org Web

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