Catalog Search Results
Author
Series
Appears on these lists
Summary
"As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power--which groups have it and which do not. In this book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories...
Author
Series
Summary
From TV's "real housewives" to The Wolf of Wall Street, our popular culture portrays the wealthy as materialistic and entitled. But what do we really know about those who live on "easy street"? In this penetrating book, Rachel Sherman draws on rare in-depth interviews that she conducted with fifty affluent New Yorkers--from hedge fund financiers and artists to stay-at-home mothers--to examine their lifestyle choices and understanding of privilege....
Author
Summary
"From 1783, when German immigrant John Jacob Astor first arrived in the United States, until 2009, when Brooke Astor's son, Anthony Marshall, was convicted of defrauding his elderly mother, the Astor name occupied a unique place in American society. The family fortune, first made by a beaver trapping business that grew into an empire, was then amplified by holdings in Manhattan real estate. Over the ensuing generations, Astors ruled Gilded Age New...
Author
Summary
The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement. They were alternately known as "waste people, " "offals, " "rubbish, " "lazy lubbers, " and "crackers." By the 1850s, the downtrodden included so-called "clay eaters" and "sandhillers, " known for prematurely-aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin, ragged clothing, and listless minds. Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular...
Author
Summary
By the bestselling author and XM and Sirius Satellite radio host heard on more than eighty radio stations coast to coast seven days a week. Reveals how the middle class, nurtured as the backbone of democracy by our Founding Fathers, is being undermined by so-called conservatives. Shows how we can reverse the erosion of the middle class and restore the egalitarian vision of the Founders. This expanded edition has a new chapter on immigration and a...
Author
Summary
"Envied and lampooned, misunderstood and yet distinctly American, WASPs are as much a culture, socioeconomic and ethnic designation, and state of mind. Throughout this dynamic story, Beran chronicles the efforts of WASPs to use their position to better the world around them, as well as the struggles of these WASPs to break free from their restrictive culture"--
Author
Summary
"I've been waiting for this book for a long time. Well, not this book, because I never imagined that the book I was waiting for would be so devastatingly smart and funny, so consistently entertaining and unflinchingly on target. In fact, I would like to have written it myself - if, that is, I had lived Linda Tirado's life and extracted all the hard lessons she has learned. I am the author of Nickel and Dimed, which tells the story of my own brief...
Author
Summary
Vanderbilt: the very name signifies wealth. The family patriarch, "the Commodore," built up a fortune that made him the world's richest man by 1877. Yet, less than fifty years after the Commodore's death, one of his direct descendants died penniless, and no Vanderbilt was counted among the world's richest people. Fortune's Children tells the dramatic story of all the amazingly colorful spenders who dissipated such a vast inheritance.
Author
Summary
Lorna Barnett is tired of playing the role of "good girl" that her mother has always lived, and that high society prizes. It isn't until she meets Jens Harken that she realizes she yearns to be cherished for herself. Although Jens is a servant, his strength and intelligence put all the society men she's met to shame.
Jens knows their love is forbidden, but he can't keep away from the spirited, headstrong girl who's stolen his heart. His boat-building...
Author
Summary
"Freed Black women organizing for protection in the Reconstruction-era South. Jewish immigrant garment workers braving deadly conditions for a sliver of independence. Asian American fieldworkers rejecting government-sanctioned indentured servitude across the Pacific. Incarcerated workers advocating for basic human rights and fair wages. The queer Black labor leader who helped orchestrate America's civil rights movement. These are only some of the...
Author
Summary
"It is an axiom of American life that advantage should be earned through ability and effort. Even as the country divides itself at every turn, the meritocratic ideal--that social and economic rewards should follow achievement rather than breeding--reigns supreme. Both Democrats and Republicans insistently repeat meritocratic notions. Meritocracy cuts to the heart of who we are. It sustains the American dream. But what if, both up and down the social...
Author
Summary
"Families today are squeezed on every side--from high childcare costs and harsh employment policies to workplaces without paid family leave or even dependable and regular working hours"--Jacket.
Attaining the standard of living our parents managed has become impossible. Quart examines the lives of many middle-class Americans who can now barely afford to raise children, and shows how our country has failed its families. She offers real solutions to...
20) Making Mr. Right
Summary
An uptight female magazine editor makes a bet with her best friend that she can make over a scruffy con man to become her magazine's 'Bachelor of the Year'. A shave and a haircut later, he's revealed as a handsome, charming rogue. She teaches him manners and etiquette, while he teaches her to live in the moment. Sparks fly and love conquers the class divide.