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Maybe someday
35
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
58/100Critics
13/100Scholars
Author:
Nelson D. Schwartz
Publisher:
Doubleday Books
Date:
March 3, 2020
From New York Time's business reporter Nelson D. Schwartz comes an investigation of how a virtual velvet rope divides Americans in every arena of life, creating a friction-free existence for those with money on one side and a Darwinian struggle for the middle class on the other side.
What The Reviewers Say
... eye-opening – and at times, outrage-inducing.
... illuminating.
... unrelenting in its assault on the facade of the country’s meritocratic order. But the book has a harder time showing what is new about much of this. The wealthy were perfectly capable of separating themselves from the masses throughout the nineteenth century and for much of the twentieth. Schwartz acknowledges, in a section exploring segmentation on cruise ships, that the Titanic was far more rigidly hierarchical than any ship today. He accepts that the wealthy have long had access to better medical care, to private rooms in hospitals, and to the most admired doctors. But a note of nostalgia seeps through his analysis, as he harks back to an ill-defined age when American life was not as stratified, when the private sector worked in greater harmony with the public interest.
... an intriguing examination of income inequality.
