From the New York Times comes a review of Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich by Robert Frank. "Frank argues that the rich are 'financial foreigners' within their own country. They have their own health care system, staffed by 'concierge doctors.' They have their own travel network of timeshare (or private) jets and destination clubs. For her birthday, one 11-year-old 'aristokid' pleads to fly commercial, 'to ride on a big plane with other people. I want to see what an airport looks like on the inside.'"... "On a more reassuring note, it's nice to learn that the rich suffer status anxiety, too. When Richistanis are asked how much money would make them feel secure, they inevitably choose a figure that is double their own net worth." And so on. Looks like an interesting title. (link)
In a similar vein, the Times also reviews The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture written by Brink Lindsey. "Ever since mass affluence, a phenomenon without precedent in the human story, exploded upon postwar America, social and political theorists have wondered, and worried, about the moral and even the spiritual consequences of material conditions. Putting scarcity behind us has been pleasant, but has it been good for us -- meaning good for our souls?" This book looks at that question and others. “'Americans,' Lindsey writes, 'have become a different kind of people,' transformed by capitalism's fecundity. Although often 'derided for its superficial banality,' materialism has resulted in 'a flood tide of spiritual yearning.'" (link)
The Times of London and Literary Review both cover William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Campaigner by William Hague. "Hague is a politician, and he writes history in the way that politicians from Macaulay to Winston Churchill have always written it. This is history with a political purpose: to connect the present with the past. Free-flowing, authoritative and absorbing, he deserves to be read, partly as a counter to those politicians such as Tony Blair who have no sense of historical process, but above all because he tells a good story and tells it well." (link) and (link)
Also in the Times Christopher Hitchens reviews two new biographies on Hillary Clinton. "There is tragedy and comedy in this story, but tragedy and comedy are almost entirely lacking in the two vast tomes that have now appeared, both haunting and highlighting her campaign. Here it all is again: the familiar and dreary tale that lays bare the banality of most modern politics." (link)
