The Reading History Project: "Aristocracy, American Style: Class Privilege and the Persistence of Elite Powers"

Aristocracy, American Style: Class Privilege and the Persistence of Elite Powers by Nancy Isenberg will be published November 10th. I read a copy provided by NetGalley.

Historian Nancy Isenberg states her theme early on in Aristocracy, American Style: "The wealthiest Americans have always wanted more than the money that places them on the Forbes list." "...what the wealthiest Americans want...is to embody aristocracy." 

I'm not sure that Isenberg makes a good case for what, exactly, an American aristocracy is beyond a group that has a great deal of money and that doesn't care how it gets it. She includes so much under the aristocracy umbrella...sports and crime hierarchies, as well as the evolution of business hierarchies in the twentieth century, for instance...that it can become difficult to take everything in. While she follows a chronological timeline, the wealthy groups she covers are unique to each period, though they often share characteristics. Once she's in the twentieth century, she often loops back to the late nineteenth century's Gilded Age Robber Barons, for instance. Otherwise, she doesn't follow any "aristocratic" group down through generations or time, which is what "aristocracy" connotes for many of us.

She does make a good argument that 

• Americans to this day remain attracted to a feudal-type system, with subordinates serving a master and loyalty being demanded and rewarded. Isenberg comes back to feudalism over and over again. 
• The "self-made man" is a myth. The people who made it the farthest in America had mentors or connections to wealth.
• We've seen a lot of political nepotism in this country. Again, to this day. Nepotism exists within Ivy League college admissions, as well. Isenberg says the U.S. is the only country that still recognizes legacy admissions.
• Our press and popular culture are filled with aristocratic terminology: "King Cotton. "Hollywood royalty." "Robber Barons." "Kingmakers." 

What Aristocracy, American Style may leave many readers feeling is that the rich have always been with us in our so-called classless society, they've never particularly cared how they became rich, and the rest of us just watch it happen.