The dramatic engine of Tearing Down the Walls, Monica Langley's biography of Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill, is his lifelong struggle for acceptance among Wall Street's elite. What a burden, we are repeatedly reminded, was Weill's background as a rumply Jewish kid from Brooklyn, N.Y.--he's even the wrong kind of Jew!--as he fought to overcome anti-Semitism and class prejudice to make it to the top, not once but twice. It's a nice story line but a somewhat artificial one.
Whatever social obstacles the Cornell-educated Weill faced when he hit Wall Street in 1955, he had built a respectable brokerage in Cogan, Berlind,...