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Martin Sneider, a longtime fashion industry insider and author of the new novel, Amy Unbound, will be discussing his book at Books & Books, 265 Aragon Ave. in Coral Gables, on July 9. Visit www.booksandbooks.com/event/an-evening-with-fashion-mogul-martin-sneider/.
Sneider has been a leader in the shoe and clothing industries for more than five decades and has long-established ties to the Miami fashion retail community. Since 1992, he has served as an award-winning adjunct professor at Washington University’s Olin School of Business, where he created and taught a course devoted to luxury goods merchandising and marketing that included trips with students to Milan, Paris, and London to visit the showrooms of Armani, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Burberry, and Cartier.
A fourth-generation retailer, Sneider started as a shoe salesman and rose to president, chief merchant, and co-CEO of one of the nation’s largest fashion and shoe apparel specialty chains. He served on the Alumni Board of Directors of Harvard Business School, was chair of St. Louis Children’s Hospital, and received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Washington University. In addition to his acclaimed debut novel, Shelf Life, and its sequel, Amy Unbound, he is the author of a nonfiction book on the shoe industry.
Amy Unbound is about a topic he knows very well — the world of business and high fashion. The book is a fun summer read about a Jewish family that rises to the top of the WASPy fashion industry and its female members’ struggle for self-fulfillment in business, politics, and romance… even if it endangers the family’s fortune.
Longtime fashion industry insider Martin Sneider gripped readers with his fiction debut, Shelf Life. “Like House of Gucci,” praised former Bloomingdale’s vice chair Frank Doroff, “this novel offers a peek inside a fashion empire, and a family in turmoil with a father and son locked in a titanic struggle for power.”
The Shelf Life story centered on Josh Feldman, the firstborn son of Max Feldman, founder and ruthless leader of Fratelli Massimo, the ’90s most celebrated fashion shoe store chain.
After years of watching eager-to-please Josh work his way up in the family business, Max finally thanked him with a severance package.
After being stabbed in the back, Josh set out to take down Max. With his wife, Amy, a brilliant lawyer, Josh devised a plan to liquidate the crumbling shoe giant and humiliate Max. Reaping riches from the deal, Josh continues to focus on his career in retailing while Amy leaves her high-pressure partnership at a law firm. The almost-bankrupt Max flees St. Louis to sponge off lovers and suckers in Miami.
Opening in 2009, Amy Unbound (Jewish Leaders Books; June 4, 2024; ISBN: 979-8-9897761-0-8) continues the saga of the Feldman family — focusing on Josh’s wife. Again, demonstrating his gift for creating flesh-and-blood characters and compelling plots, Sneider captures the toll of the drive for success in a marriage while drawing readers into another volatile, adrenaline-fueled world: politics.
At Amy’s urging, Josh takes an executive position with Missouri Atlantic Group (MAG), the same huge private equity concern that bought Fratelli Massimo. She knew her husband thrived in the thick of the retail fray, and with the decline of the mall, the rise of the internet, the Great Recession, and several sexual harassment complaints against store managers, MAG had plenty of challenges to keep him occupied battling the complacency and inertia of MAG’s conventional bricks and mortar retail chains.
But she wasn’t prepared for how Josh’s big career comeback would affect her. With Josh frequently away on business and distant when he was home, Amy felt neglected and, worse, unfulfilled.
She finds renewed purpose on the “Hope and Change Express” — a chartered bus filled with kindred members of the National Council of Jewish Women on their way to Washington, DC, to witness the historic inauguration of President Barack Obama. Swept up in the enthusiasm and basking in the NCJW president’s recognition of her talent for getting things done and faith in her ability to make a meaningful difference, Amy decides to fully commit to her activism.
Before long, she is recruited by The Chicago Alliance for Social Justice, a new NGO with deep pockets and powerful connections. And Josh is the one left feeling neglected by his wife’s demanding new career.
Keeping the tension mounting and the twists coming, Amy Unbound follows Amy as she throws herself into her work and begins to question her marriage. While Amy flirts with a dangerous romantic relationship and Josh comes to terms with the cost of his obsession with leading a fashion retail empire, broke and vengeful Max is stewing and scheming, waiting for the perfect chance to exact revenge on his son and daughter-in-law.
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