Nocera, Joseph

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Nocera, Joseph

PERSONAL: Male. Education: Boston University, B.S.

ADDRESSES: Office—Fortune, 1271 Sixth Ave., 16th Floor, New York, NY 10020. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Editor, journalist, and educator. Fortune magazine, New York, NY, editorial director; Columbia University, New York, NY, faculty member. Former executive editor, New England Monthly; former senior editor, Texas Monthly; editor, Washington Monthly, 1979–80.

AWARDS, HONORS: Gerald Loeb Award, 1993, 1996; John Hancock Award for excellence in business and financial journalism, 1983, 1984, 1991; Best Business Book designation, Business Week, 1994, and Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism, New York Public Library, 1995, both for A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Bidness: The Booms and Busts of the Texas Economy, Texas Monthly Press (Austin, TX), 1986.

A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1994.

Author of "Profit Motive" column for Gentleman's Quarterly and Esquire; author of column for Money magazine. Contributor to numerous publications, including Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Monthly.

SIDELIGHTS: Joseph Nocera is a journalist who chronicles the history of American business and finance. In his first book, an anthology titled Bidness: The Booms and Busts of the Texas Economy, Nocera collects stories from the journal Texas Monthly that illustrate the entrepreneurial spirit, Texas-style. Nocera's selections recount business dealings in airlines, oil, cattle, art, and real estate. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Anthony Schmitz called the book "a study primarily in clawing ambition and unthinking greed." Schmitz wrote that the author's text is somewhat repetitive, noting "you feel as though you've watched the same dog chase its tail for an awfully long time," but he also praised Nocera's reporting as "thorough" and "lively."

In A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class Nocera describes how financial tools such as credit cards and certificates of deposit became ubiquitous in the life of ordinary middle-class Americans several decades after World War II. Christopher Byron wrote in the Los Angles Times that, "Deploying a large cast of characters … and a breezy writing style, Nocera fills in what is literally thirty years of missing history." The book traces the developments that fueled a revolution in the way the American middle class handle their money. He delves into the impact the proliferation of credit cards, automated teller machines, and other technological developments have had on how money is used and circulated. He also looks at the growth of money market and mutual funds and the competitiveness of Wall Street entrepreneurs who worked to circumvent government restrictions on banks. New Republic contributor James Grant commented that Nocera's "historical reasoning is questionable" when he writes about certain funds and that he is a "source of … wide-eyed optimism about markets today." Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Lawrence S. Ritter praised A Piece of the Action: "How it all happened is a story worth telling, and Nocera narrates it admirably, with rare insight and considerable flair." A Publishers Weekly contributor called the book "an entertaining and edifying history of personal finance."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 15, 1994, David Rouse, review of A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class, p. 382.

Los Angeles Times, October 23, 1994, Christopher Byron, review of A Piece of the Action, pp. 1, 13.

New Republic, October 24, 1994, James Grant, review of A Piece of the Action, p. 37.

New York Times Book Review, December 21, 1986, Anthony Schmitz, review of Bidness: The Booms and Busts of the Texas Economy, p. 15; October 23, 1994, Lawrence S. Ritter, review of A Piece of the Action, pp. 12-13.

Publishers Weekly, August 22, 1994, review of A Piece of the Action, p. 47.

Technology Review, July, 1995, Stephen D. Solomon, review of A Piece of the Action, p. 67.