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"A proudly partisan history of the British aristocracy - which scores some shrewd hits against the upper class themselves, and the nostalgia of the rest of us for their less endearing eccentricities. A great antidote to Downton Abbey." (Mary Beard) Exploring the extraordinary social and political dominance enjoyed by the British aristocracy over the centuries, Entitled seeks to explain how a tiny number of noble families rose to such a position in the first place. It reveals the often nefarious means they have employed to maintain their wealth, power and prestige and examines the greed, ambition, jealousy and rivalry which drove aristocratic families to guard their interests with such determination. In telling their history, Entitled introduces a cast of extraordinary characters: fierce warriors, rakish dandies, political dilettantes, charming eccentrics, arrogant snobs and criminals who quite literally got away with murder.
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.
He reconstructs the extraordinary financial history of the dukes of Devonshire, narrates the story of the Cozens-Hardys, a Norfolk family who played a remarkably varied part in the life of their county, and offers a controversial reappraisal of the forebears, lives, work, and personalities of Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West - a portrait, notes Cannadine, of more than a marriage.
For nine hundred years the British aristocracy has considered itself ideally qualified to rule others, make laws and guide the fortunes of the nation. Tracing the history of this remarkable supremacy, ARISTOCRATS is a story of wars, intrigue, chicanery and extremes of both selflessness and greed. James also illuminates how the aristocracy's infatuation with classical art has forged our heritage, how its love of sport has shaped our pastimes and values - and how its scandals have entertained the public. Impeccably researched, balanced and brilliantly entertaining, ARISTOCRATS is an enthralling history of power, influence and an extraordinary knack for survival.
Epic in scope, precise in detail, and heart-breaking in its human drama, Former People is the first book to recount the history of the aristocracy caught up in the maelstrom of the Bolshevik Revolution and the creation of Stalin's Russia. Filled with chilling tales of looted palaces and burning estates, of desperate flights in the night from marauding peasants and Red Army soldiers, of imprisonment, exile, and execution, it is the story of how a centuries'-old elite, famous for its glittering wealth, its service to the Tsar and Empire, and its promotion of the arts and culture, was dispossessed and destroyed along with the rest of old Russia. Yet Former People is also a story of survival and accommodation, of how many of the tsarist ruling class—so-called "former people" and "class enemies"—overcame the psychological wounds inflicted by the loss of their world and decades of repression as they struggled to find a place for themselves and their families in the new, hostile order of the Soviet Union. Chronicling the fate of two great aristocratic families—the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns—it reveals how even in the darkest depths of the terror, daily life went on. Told with sensitivity and nuance by acclaimed historian Douglas Smith, Former People is the dramatic portrait of two of Russia's most powerful aristocratic families, and a sweeping account of their homeland in violent transition.
When Kathy Boudin was arrested in 1981 after a botched armed robbery and shootout that left a Brinks guard and two policemen dead, she ended a decade living underground as part of the radical Weathermen underground; she would spend the next 22 years in Bedford Hills prison. In Family Circle, Boudin’s former classmate Susan Braudy vividly re-creates the radicalization of this intelligent, privileged young woman who came from one of the most prominent liberal intellectual families in America. She illuminates Boudin’s relationship with her parents --and particularly with her father Leonard, a famous leftist lawyer--and shows how Kathy, swept up in the ferment of the late 1960s, moved further and further from the Old Left ideals they embodied. Based on extensive interviews, court documents, and Boudin family papers,Family Circle is both a rich biography of a family and a intimate window into a turbulent and fascinating time.