As many Upper West Side New York­ers are well aware, Ida and Isidor Straus went to their deaths togeth­er on the maid­en voy­age of the Titan­ic. Some may also know the Straus­es were Jew­ish and had some­thing to do with Macy’s, but that’s prob­a­bly the lim­it of our col­lec­tive knowl­edge. Now McCash’s biog­ra­phy of the Straus­es fills in their sto­ry. We dis­cov­er that Isidor’s ances­tors were Jews who had set­tled in Geor­gia before the Civ­il War; the fam­i­ly only moved to New York and built a retail empire after the Civ­il War. Although the Straus­es were not par­tic­u­lar­ly obser­vant Jews, their com­mit­ment to var­i­ous social wel­fare schemes (sub­si­dized employ­ee meals, health care, and vaca­tions) was sig­nif­i­cant and could be viewed as an expres­sion of core Jew­ish val­ues. While McCash’s research is thor­ough, she focus­es on telling the fam­i­ly sto­ry, rather than rais­ing ques­tions about it. Read­ers may won­der how the Straus­es felt about their slave-hold­ing past, how they viewed Jew­ish iden­ti­ty, or how they felt about their enor­mous wealth, but these issues are not explored here. Bib­li­og­ra­phy, index, notes, photographs.