There are evenings that feel right from the very moment one steps through the door. The light is soft, the table is generous, and the room is filled with people who are genuinely glad to see one another. They hardly need an occasion to gather, yet they are rather grateful when there happen to be several.
Just such an evening unfolded in Saratoga Springs, New York, on Thursday, September 17, 2026, and it was one of those rare nights when everything goes precisely as it should. Members of the Capital CFO+ community came together to celebrate one another and to welcome a new book into the world: The Untold Story of America’s Sales Tax by Dmitry Rowan.
And what finer way to set the evening in motion than to invite each guest to arrive in the spirit of a famous figure of their choosing? The result was a room that looked thoroughly polished yet never once felt starched. It was, quite simply, delightful, and as it so happily turned out, precisely the right setting for a book about money, history, and the people in between.
A story older than you might think
Most of us encounter sales tax at the till and think nothing more of it. Dmitry Rowan thinks a great deal more of it. His book follows the story, in the publisher’s own words, “from the granaries of ancient Egypt to the checkout screens of the modern internet,” and shows how a few pennies on a purchase have quietly shaped kingdoms, colonies, and the very country we live in today.
It is a book with a long memory, and it reads as good history ought to: with pace, with curiosity, and with a good many moments when one looks up from the page and thinks, “Well, I never knew that. And yet it makes perfect sense.”
It found, fittingly, a most receptive audience. The room was made up largely of accountants and finance professionals, people who meet sales tax not at the till but on an ordinary Tuesday morning, and few could have welcomed such a book more warmly.
“A room that looked thoroughly polished, yet never once felt starched.”
An evening to remember
There was a beautiful table, laid with evident care. There was music, and before long a few brave voices to accompany it. There was a great deal of laughter. And there was that rare and easy feeling of a professional community at its very finest: sharp, curious, and entirely at home in one another’s company.
With heartfelt thanks to Sabrina Houser
None of this would have been possible without Sabrina Houser, owner of Capital CFO+ and one of Upstate New York’s most admired community leaders.
Sabrina has built something genuinely rare: a professional community as warm as it is accomplished. She opened that community to a new book with true generosity, received it with the utmost grace, and created the sort of evening one so seldom finds, where people feel free to be serious and joyful in equal measure.
Her support, her hospitality, and her faith in good ideas made all the difference.
With our deepest gratitude, thank you, Sabrina!
News Editorial Desk, Pine Tree Shilling Publishing