Like a Black Gatsby with Nick Carraway at His Side

As far as memoir titles go, 1995's Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?—the story of Reginald F. Lewis, the first Black business tycoon in America—has to rank among the best; it captures the personality, zeal, and ambition of the guy who orchestrated one of the biggest leveraged buyouts in history, purchasing Beatrice International for close to $1 billion and becoming the richest Black American in the process.

- SCOTT GARCEAU

As far as memoir titles go, 1995's Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?—the story of Reginald F. Lewis, the first Black business tycoon in America—has to rank among the best; it captures the personality, zeal, and ambition of the guy who orchestrated one of the biggest leveraged buyouts in history, purchasing Beatrice International for close to $1 billion and becoming the richest Black American in the process.

Right next to him through all of this was a Filipino public relations maverick named Rene "Butch" Meily, and his account—From Manila to Wall Street: An Immigrant's Journey with America's First Black Tycoon—does something else: it gives us a front-row seat to the biggest deals in that era of junk bonds, Michael Milken, and Michael Douglas declaring "Greed is good" in the movie Wall Street.

It's also an entertaining, well-paced read, taking us through Meily's early days, being recruited by Lewis in his rising TLC (The Lewis Corporation) from New York PR firm Burson Marstellar in 1987, all the way through the businessman's untimely death from brain cancer in 1993. Along the way, TLC acquired Beatrice International, harnessing scores of European food brands, selling off most of its pieces, and coming out way ahead.

We meet some of the business names of the era, like Milken, who helped finance the Beatrice buyout, and later ended up in prison for insider trading (he was pardoned by President Donald Trump during his first term).

Meily, who has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Baltimore Sun, and also