In The Wizard of Lies, former New York Times journalist Diana Henriques examines the man behind the elaborate Ponzi scheme that cost investors more than 50 billion dollars in the early 2000s. She uses if at the beginning of a sentence to emphasize just how different the perception of Wall Street was when this man was growing up, back in the 1950s.

If investing on Wall Street seemed unwise, working there looked like a remote possibility at best for kids like _______ _________ in the 1950s—and not just because it was risky. Nobody made much money as a stock broker in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when government bonds were far more attractive to shell-shocked investors than corporate stocks

Identify the man.

The focus of Janesville: An American Story by Pulitzer Prize winner Amy Goldstein is the manufacturing town of Janesville, Wisconsin. Goldstein uses if to highlight the role two large companies played in the town’s development. Fill in the missing phrase.

If Parker Pen put Janesville on _____ _____, GM kept it there. It proved that Janesville could surmount adversity under trying circumstances, seemingly immune to the blows of history.