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Author: Stephen Birmingham Publisher: Open Road Media ISBN: 1504095561 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 460
Book Description
An “entertaining and perceptive” history of America’s most exclusive families, from the Brahmins of New England to the Grandees of California (The Washington Post). America has always been a constitutionally classless society, yet an American aristocracy emerged anyway—a private club whose members run in the same circles and observe the same unwritten rules. Here, renowned social historian Stephen Birmingham reveals the inner workings of this aristocracy. He identifies which families in which cities have always mattered, and how they’ve defined America. America’s Secret Aristocracy offers an inside look at the estates, marriages, and financial empires of America’s most powerful families—from the Randolphs of Virginia and the Roosevelts of New York to the Carillos and Ortegas of California. With countless anecdotes about our nation’s elite, including interviews with their modern-day descendants, Birmingham presents colorful portraits that capture the true definition, essence, and customs of America’s aristocracy.
Author: Stephen Birmingham Publisher: Open Road Media ISBN: 1504095561 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 460
Book Description
An “entertaining and perceptive” history of America’s most exclusive families, from the Brahmins of New England to the Grandees of California (The Washington Post). America has always been a constitutionally classless society, yet an American aristocracy emerged anyway—a private club whose members run in the same circles and observe the same unwritten rules. Here, renowned social historian Stephen Birmingham reveals the inner workings of this aristocracy. He identifies which families in which cities have always mattered, and how they’ve defined America. America’s Secret Aristocracy offers an inside look at the estates, marriages, and financial empires of America’s most powerful families—from the Randolphs of Virginia and the Roosevelts of New York to the Carillos and Ortegas of California. With countless anecdotes about our nation’s elite, including interviews with their modern-day descendants, Birmingham presents colorful portraits that capture the true definition, essence, and customs of America’s aristocracy.
Author: Andrei Soldatov Publisher: PublicAffairs ISBN: 1586489232 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 322
Book Description
In The New Nobility, two courageous Russian investigative journalists open up the closed and murky world of the Russian Federal Security Service. While Vladimir Putin has been president and prime minister of Russia, the Kremlin has deployed the security services to intimidate the political opposition, reassert the power of the state, and carry out assassinations overseas. At the same time, its agents and spies were put beyond public accountability and blessed with the prestige, benefits, and legitimacy lost since the Soviet collapse. The security services have played a central -- and often mysterious -- role at key turning points in Russia during these tumultuous years: from the Moscow apartment house bombings and theater siege, to the war in Chechnya and the Beslan massacre. The security services are not all-powerful; they have made clumsy and sometimes catastrophic blunders. But what is clear is that after the chaotic 1990s, when they were sidelined, they have made a remarkable return to power, abetted by their most famous alumnus, Putin.
Author: Matthew Stewart Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1982114207 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 352
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: Steven Sora Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1594778671 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 289
Book Description
An expose of the dark and critical role secret societies play within the ruling families in America and their influence on American democracy, current events, and world history. • Reveals the enormous influence secret societies still have on contemporary American life. • Shows how the secret Masonic cells that smuggled in the democratic ideals inspiring the American Revolution also enabled the future elite of the new society to build huge fortunes. Elite and secret societies have always been a major force in the history of Western civilization. The alliances formed in secret societies such as the Knights Templar, the Knights of Christ, and the Freemasons transcended patriotism and religious beliefs and had a powerful influence on the establishment of the United States of America. While these secret associations of merchants, smugglers, occultists, gamblers, spies, and slavers succeeded in freeing the United States from foreign domination, the dark side is that the elite used their secret connections to further their own wealth and power. These secret cells did not hesitate to sponsor the assassination of a president and even attempted to break up the union on several occasions when it was deemed expedient. From the Sons of Liberty and the Essex Junto to the Ku Klux Klan, secret societies have played critical roles in building the fortunes of America's elite. Now Steven Sora reveals in alarming detail how secretive societies continue to wield power even today as organizations such as Yale's Skull & Bones unite America's modern ruling families as strongly as Masonic Lodges once connected the Astors, Livingstons, and Roosevelts. Their immense power and wealth allow this elite to control America to an even greater degree than the Templars once dominated Europe.
Author: Dorothee Wagner von Hoff Publisher: transcript Verlag ISBN: 3839422760 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 341
Book Description
This book presents the meticulous case studies of three individual houses from different eras, which serve to depict the social, political, and cultural effects that domestic architecture and interior design had on the upper class, the city of Boston, and a national American identity. It takes the reader on a journey to 18th and 19th century Boston and provides insight into the lives of these prominent men and women as seen through the perspective of their homes. It is a novel examination of the cultural significance of domestic architecture and interior design and, because of its story-telling character and extensive attention to detail, it is fascinating for curious readers and cultural historians alike.
Author: Stephen Richard Higley Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 9780847680214 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 212
Book Description
In the first analytical study of where the American upper-class lives and vacations, Stephen R. Higley explores the ways in which upper-class residential places are created and maintained. Drawing on the Social Register as a main source of data, Higley examines the intersection of class, status, and geography, and demonstrates the ways in which physical proximity solidifies upper-class consciousness.
Author: Michael Gross Publisher: Grove Press ISBN: 080216188X Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 334
Book Description
Fifteen families.Four hundred years. The complex saga of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite in America’s history. For decades, writers from Cleveland Amory to Joseph Alsop to the editors of Politico have proclaimed the diminishment of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, who for generations were the dominant socio-cultural-political force in America. While the WASP elite has, in the last half century, indeed drifted from American centrality to the periphery, its relevance and impact remain, as Michael Gross reveals in his compelling chronicle. From Colonial America’s founding settlements through the Gilded Age to the present day, Gross traces the complex legacy of American WASPs—their profound accomplishments and egregious failures—through the lives of fifteen influential individuals and their very privileged, sometimes intermarried families. As the Bradford, Randolph, Morris, Biddle, Sanford, Peabody and Whitney clans progress, prosper and periodically stumble, defining aspects in the four-century sweep of American history emerge: our wide, oft-contentious religious diversity; the deep scars of slavery, genocide, and intolerance; the creation and sometime mis-use of astonishing economic and political power; an enduring belief in the future; an instinct to offset inequity with philanthropy; an equal capacity for irresponsible, sometimes wanton, behavior. “American society was supposed to be different,” writes Gross, “but for most of our history we have had a patriciate, an aristocracy, a hereditary oligarchic upper class, who initiated the American national experiment.” In previous acclaimed books such as 740 Park and Rogues’ Gallery, Gross has explored elite culture in microcosm; expanding the canvas, Flight of the WASP chronicles it across four centuries and fifteen generations in an ambitious and consequential contribution to American history.
Author: Seymour Morris Jr. Publisher: Post Hill Press ISBN: 1642936014 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 1262
Book Description
We tend to think of history as settled, set in stone, but American History Revised reveals a past that is filled with ironies, surprises, and misconceptions. Living abroad for twelve years gave author Seymour Morris Jr. the opportunity to view his country as an outsider and compelled him to examine American history from a fresh perspective. As Morris colorfully illustrates through the 200 historical vignettes that make up this book, much of our nation’s past is quite different—and far more remarkable—than we thought. We discover that: • In the 1950s Ford was approached by two Japanese companies begging for a joint venture. Ford declined their offers, calling them makers of “tin cars.” The two companies were Toyota and Nissan. • Eleanor Roosevelt and most women’s groups opposed the Equal Rights Amendment forbidding gender discrimination. • The two generals who ended the Civil War weren’t Grant and Lee. • The #1 bestselling American book of all time was written in one day. • The Dutch made a bad investment buying Manhattan for $24. • Two young girls aimed someday to become First Lady—and succeeded. • Three times, a private financier saved the United States from bankruptcy. Organized into ten thematic chapters, American History Revised plumbs American history’s numerous inconsistencies, twists, and turns to make it come alive again.
Author: John Carlos Rowe Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231058950 Category : Literary Collections Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
Challenges the conventional critical reading of the American poetic project as an engagement with or reaction against Emersonian thought. Rowe demonstrates how ideals of individualism, intellectualism, and otherworldiness inevitably undermine any political effectiveness that a writer may seek to achieve.
Author: Stephen Birmingham
Author: Stephen Birmingham
Author: Andrei Soldatov
Author: Matthew Stewart
Author: Steven Sora
Author: Stephen Birmingham
Author: Dorothee Wagner von Hoff
Author: Stephen Richard Higley
Author: Michael Gross
Author: Seymour Morris Jr.
Author: John Carlos Rowe