Book excerpt: "Streetwise" by Lloyd Blankfein

Sunday Morning Book excerpt: "Streetwise" by Lloyd Blankfein February 27, 2026 / 5:05 PM EST / CBS News Add CBS News on Google We may receive an affiliate commission from anything you buy from this article. In his new memoir, "Streetwise: Getting to and Through Goldman Sachs" (to be published March 1 by Penguin Press), former CEO Lloyd Blankfein writes about a life that stretched from the projects of New York City to the pinnacle of Wall Street. Read the excerpt below, and don't miss Jo Ling Kent's interview with Lloyd Blankfein on "CBS Sunday Morning" March 1! "Streetwise" by Lloyd Blankfein $35 at Amazon Prefer to listen? Audible has a 30-day free trial available right now. Try Audible for free Chapter I: Advantages When I go into a room full of people, I have to decide whether I'm going to be the member of the establishment or the kid from Brooklyn. I am a product of East New York, Brooklyn, where I grew up in the projects, and I still see the world through those eyes. To this day, I have to concentrate to say rather and not rath-uh. I can't compare myself with people I've worked with who overcame really severe disadvantage, like broken homes, civil wars, extreme poverty, or forced emigration. But growing up in public housing, in a family that was getting by, and attending public schools that were failing, left its mark on me. I struggle with ambivalence. I spend half my time wanting to give stuff to my kids, the other half tormenting them for having stuff I gave them that I didn't have. My earliest memories are from the South Bronx, where my family lived in a tenement building on Leggett Avenue. I used to love watching the coal that heated the building get delivered. It made a roar as it poured from the truck down a chute into the cellar. Another memory: the organ- grinder who sometimes played on the sidewalk outside our apartment. My mother wrapped a coin in paper and threw it out the window for his monkey to pick up. When I was three, we moved from the Bronx t...