THRONGS of happy book lovers gathered in Carlow College recently for its annual book fair. Booksellers from across Leinster did a roaring trade for the first…
Updated Dec 24, 2020 How did Charles Dickens beloved Christmas story become a trophy for a Wall Street titan? By Zachary D. Carter Marc Janks/HuffPost Gather round, friends, and savor a holiday fable for our bitter age. As in the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, the villain of this story is money. It features its own Ebenezer Scrooge and ghosts of moral compunction. But the ending of our tale has been adjusted: Money prevails and Scrooge dies miserable and rich, but not before buying off his ghosts and fashioning them into a museum exhibit. That’s where I’m standing, in the annual Yuletide display of John Pierpont Morgan’s collection of Dickensia at the Morgan Library, the Madison Avenue monument to the excesses and undeniable good taste of the man who invented American banking as we know it. Specifically, I am standing in front of the original handwritten manuscript of