About John L. Loeb, Jr's Reflections, Memories, and Confessions
By his own admission, John L. Loeb Jr. was born with two silver spoons in my mouth. Descended from the founders of two major Wall Street firms Lehman Brothers and Loeb, Rhoades this former US Ambassador to Denmark weaves his fascinating, poignant personal story with an insider's perspective on diplomacy, the environment, and the social life of New York's elite from the nineteenth century to the present.

Loeb is one of the last of New York's Our Crowd, the city's nineteenth- and twentieth-century Jewish establishment. His maternal uncles included New York Governor Herbert Lehman and Irving Lehman, Chief Justice of the New York Court of Appeals. On his paternal side, grandfather Carl M. Loeb and father John L. Loeb Sr. founded Loeb, Rhoades. And his brother Arthur founded New York City's beloved Madison Avenue Bookshop. Loeb's confessions are an open and moving account of the blessings and burdens of growing up in his family's circle of expectations.

These very pressures have made Loeb's life one more of obligation than leisure. As a boy at an elite private school, he faced persistent anti-Semitism that shaped his philanthropic commitments through his life. Although not religiously observant, Loeb embraces his Jewish identity and has promoted respect for members of all religions at home and abroad. Taking inspiration from George Washington's immortal 1790 Letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, in which our first president promised the government of the United States would give to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, he built the Loeb Visitors Center at the Touro Synagogue National Historic Site. In Newport, RI. In 2016, he funded the Loeb Institute for Religious Freedom at The George Washington University.

Loeb's life of public service includes a stint in the US Air Force and chairmanship of the New York State Council on the Environment. Appointed US Ambassador to Denmark by Ronald Reagan in 1981, Loeb began building what is today the largest privately held collection of Danish fine art. Queen Margarethe of Denmark presented him with a knighthood - the Grand Cross of the Order of Dannebrog, her nation's highest civilian honor.

Loeb's leadership of the Winston Churchill Foundation of the United States has greatly advanced the careers of hundreds of young American scientists who received scholarships to spend a year at Churchill College, Cambridge. Previously, the Foundation's first step was to establish a fellowship fund to invite distinguished American scientists to pursue their academic interests at Churchill College. Seven of these scientists became Nobel laureates. In 1993, Queen Elizabeth of England appointed Loeb a Commander of the British Empire.

Combining his business acumen with a commitment to steward the land, Loeb still maintains Riverbend Vineyards in California's Sonoma County. Loeb founded of the highly-esteemed Sonoma-Loeb wines.

This highly personal and revealing memoir is, above all, a testament to his passionate commitment to his wife, family, and philanthropic commitments. Still going strong at eighty-eight years old, John Loeb is far from having written the final chapter of his life.