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Author: Matthew Stewart
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982114207
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
A “brilliant” (The Washington Post), “clear-eyed and incisive” (The New Republic) analysis of how the wealthiest group in American society is making life miserable for everyone—including themselves. In 21st-century America, the top 0.1% of the wealth distribution have walked away with the big prizes even while the bottom 90% have lost ground. What’s left of the American Dream has taken refuge in the 9.9% that lies just below the tip of extreme wealth. Collectively, the members of this group control more than half of the wealth in the country—and they are doing whatever it takes to hang on to their piece of the action in an increasingly unjust system. They log insane hours at the office and then turn their leisure time into an excuse for more career-building, even as they rely on an underpaid servant class to power their economic success and satisfy their personal needs. They have segregated themselves into zip codes designed to exclude as many people as possible. They have made fitness a national obsession even as swaths of the population lose healthcare and grow sicker. They have created an unprecedented demand for admission to elite schools and helped to fuel the dramatic cost of higher education. They channel their political energy into symbolic conflicts over identity in order to avoid acknowledging the economic roots of their privilege. And they have created an ethos of “merit” to justify their advantages. They are all around us. In fact, they are us—or what we are supposed to want to be. In this “captivating account” (Robert D. Putnam, author of Bowling Alone), Matthew Stewart argues that a new aristocracy is emerging in American society and it is repeating the mistakes of history. It is entrenching inequality, warping our culture, eroding democracy, and transforming an abundant economy into a source of misery. He calls for a regrounding of American culture and politics on a foundation closer to the original promise of America.
Author: Matthew Stewart
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982114207
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Get Book Here
Book Description
A “brilliant” (The Washington Post), “clear-eyed and incisive” (The New Republic) analysis of how the wealthiest group in American society is making life miserable for everyone—including themselves. In 21st-century America, the top 0.1% of the wealth distribution have walked away with the big prizes even while the bottom 90% have lost ground. What’s left of the American Dream has taken refuge in the 9.9% that lies just below the tip of extreme wealth. Collectively, the members of this group control more than half of the wealth in the country—and they are doing whatever it takes to hang on to their piece of the action in an increasingly unjust system. They log insane hours at the office and then turn their leisure time into an excuse for more career-building, even as they rely on an underpaid servant class to power their economic success and satisfy their personal needs. They have segregated themselves into zip codes designed to exclude as many people as possible. They have made fitness a national obsession even as swaths of the population lose healthcare and grow sicker. They have created an unprecedented demand for admission to elite schools and helped to fuel the dramatic cost of higher education. They channel their political energy into symbolic conflicts over identity in order to avoid acknowledging the economic roots of their privilege. And they have created an ethos of “merit” to justify their advantages. They are all around us. In fact, they are us—or what we are supposed to want to be. In this “captivating account” (Robert D. Putnam, author of Bowling Alone), Matthew Stewart argues that a new aristocracy is emerging in American society and it is repeating the mistakes of history. It is entrenching inequality, warping our culture, eroding democracy, and transforming an abundant economy into a source of misery. He calls for a regrounding of American culture and politics on a foundation closer to the original promise of America.
Author: Francis Joseph Grund
Publisher: London : R. Bentley
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 360
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Book Description
Author: Clemens David Heymann
Publisher: New York : Dodd, Mead
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 582
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Book Description
Author: Benjamin Barber
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0307827283
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 345
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Book Description
In this brilliant, controversial, and profoundly original book, Benjamin R. Barber fundamentally alters the terms of the current debate over the value of opportunity in American education, politics, and culture. Barber argues that the fashionable rallying cries of cultural literacy and political correctness completely miss the point of what is wrong with our society. While we fret about "the closing of the American mind" we utterly ignore the closing of American schools. While we worry about Japanese technology, we fail to tap the more fundamental ideological resources on which our country was founded. As Barber argues, the future of America lies not in competition but in education. Education in America can and must embrace both democracy and excellence. Barber demonstrates persuasively that our national story has always comprised an intermingling of diverse, contradictory, often subversive voices. Multiculturalism has, from the very start, defined America. From his gripping portrait of America poised on the brink of unprecedented change, Barber offers a daringly original program for effecting change: for teaching democracy depends not only on the preeminence of education but on a resurgence of true community service. A ringing challenge to the complacency, cynicism, and muddled thinking of our time that will change the way you feel about being an American citizen.
Author: Hazard Forbes John Hazard Forbes
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1450202764
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 110
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Book Description
The upper class. The upper crust. Brahmans, blue bloods, and high society. Patricians, plutocrats, and aristocrats. Each describes Americans who have enjoyed generations of wealth and prestige, but such people never use these terms. Old money is preferred. In Old Money America, author John Hazard Forbes shares an insider's view about old money and the life of America's upper class. Forbes' thirty-five-year career as an art expert and appraiser gave him unusual entrée into the houses and lives of the old rich. Along with their collections, he closely examined the customs, manners, and viewpoints of America's upper crust. Old Money America presents a discussion of the: Ironies of old money Who and where of old money Financial secrets of old money Hallmarks of old money Care and housing of old money Secret language of old money Skeletons in the closet of old money Simple life of old money Gear and garb of old money Having known the elites of New York, Pennsylvania, the Midwest, New England, and the South, Forbes is in a unique position to observe and report on his interaction with these remarkable, if often peculiar, people.
Author: Kevin Phillips
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141941316
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 525
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Book Description
An acerbic, withering account of the ascent of the Bush family to the pinnacle of the American political and social elite and the implications of the dynasty's hold on power for democracy in America. With an unerring instinct for fakery and humbug,Phillips traces the convoluted trail of Bush mendacity through three generations. The picture he paints of a family willing to do ANYTHING to hold power and a country so craven as to vote for it is both very funny and completely dismaying in equal measure.
Author: Edward Digby Baltzell
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300038187
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 454
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Book Description
This classic account of the traditional upper class in America traces its origins, lifestyles, and political and social attitudes from the time of Theodore Roosevelt to that of John F. Kennedy. Sociologist E. Digby Baltzell describes the problems of exclusion and prejudice within the community of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (or WASPs, an acronym he coined) and predicts with amazing accuracy what will happen when this inbred group is forced to share privilege and power with talented members of minority groups. "The book may actually hold more interest today than when it was first published. New generations of readers can resonate all the more to this masterly and beautifully written work that provides sociological understanding of its engrossing subject."--Robert K. Merton, Columbia University "The documentation and illustration in the book make it valuable as social history, quite apart from any theoretical hypothesis. As such, it sketches the rise of the WASP penchant for country clubs, patriotic societies and genealogy. It traces the history of anti-Semitism in America. It describes the intellectual conflict between Social Darwinism and the environmental social science founded half a century ago by men like John Dewey, Charles A. Beard, Thorstein Veblen, Franz Boas and Frederick Jackson Turner. In short, The Protestant Establishment is a wide-ranging, intelligent and provocative book."--Alvin Toffler, New York Times Book Review "The Protestant Establishment has many virtues that lift it above the level we have come to expect in works of contemporary social and cultural analysis. It is clearly and convincingly written."--H. Stuart Hughes, New York Review of Books "What makes Baltzell's analysis of the evolution of the American elite superior to the accounts of earlier writers . . . is that he exposes the connections between high social status and political and economic power."--Dennis H. Wrong, Commentary
Author: Michael Knox Beran
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1643137077
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 481
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Book Description
An examination of WASP culture through the lives of some of its most prominent figures. Envied and lampooned, misunderstood and yet distinctly American, WASPs are as much a culture, socioeconomic and ethnic designation, and state of mind. Charming, witty, and vigorously researced, WASPS traces the rise and fall of this distinctly American phenomenon through the lives of prominent icons from Henry Adams and Theodore Roosevelt to George Santayana and John Jay Chapman. Throughout this dynamic story, Beran chronicles the efforts of WASPs to better the world around them as well as the struggles of these WASPs to break free from their restrictive culture. The death of George H. W. Bush brought about reflections on the end of patrician WASP culture, where privilege reigned, but so did a genuine desire to use that privilege for public service. In the time of Trump—who is the antithesis of true WASP culture—people look at the John Kerry, Bobby Kennedy, and Philip and Kay Grahams of the world with wistfulness. And even though we are a more diverse and pluralistic nation now than ever before, there is something about WASP culture that remains enduringly aspirational and fascinating. Beginning at the turn of the 20th century, Beran’s saga dramatizes the evolving American aristocracy that forever changed a nation—and what we can still glean from WASP culture as we enter a new era.
Author: Daniel Kilbride
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 9781570036569
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
Placing class rather than race or gender at the center of this comparative study of North and South, Kilbride exposes the close connections that united privileged southerners and Philadelphians in the years leading to the Civil War. He finds that the bonds between these similarly educated and socialized groups to be so durable that they resisted sectional warfare. Kilbride notes that southern planters were drawn particularly to Philadelphia because of its proximity to the South and perception of the city as being untainted by northern radicalism. In addition, Philadelphia possessed well-regarded schools, prestigious intellectual societies, historical landmarks, and fashionable shopping districts. In the city's parlors, ballrooms, and classrooms, privileged northerners and southerners forged a republican aristocracy that ignored the Mason-Dixon line.
Author: Adrian Wooldridge
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1510768629
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 594
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Book Description
The Times (UK) book of the year! Meritocracy: the idea that people should be advanced according to their talents rather than their birth. While this initially seemed like a novel concept, by the end of the twentieth century it had become the world's ruling ideology. How did this happen, and why is meritocracy now under attack from both right and left? In The Aristocracy of Talent, esteemed journalist and historian Adrian Wooldridge traces the history of meritocracy forged by the politicians and officials who introduced the revolutionary principle of open competition, the psychologists who devised methods for measuring natural mental abilities, and the educationalists who built ladders of educational opportunity. He looks outside western cultures and shows what transformative effects it has had everywhere it has been adopted, especially once women were brought into the meritocratic system. Wooldridge also shows how meritocracy has now become corrupted and argues that the recent stalling of social mobility is the result of failure to complete the meritocratic revolution. Rather than abandoning meritocracy, he says, we should call for its renewal.
