In today's world, the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite. Highly educated and defined by cultural capital rather than income bracket, these individuals earnestly buy organic, carry NPR tote bags, and breast-feed their babies. They care about discreet, inconspicuous consumption—like eating free-range chicken and heirloom tomatoes, wearing organic cotton shirts and TOMS shoes, and listening to the Serial podcast. They use their purchasing power to hire nannies and housekeepers, to cultivate their children's growth, and to practice yoga and Pilates. In The Sum of Small Things, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett dubs this segment of society "the aspirational class" and discusses how, through deft decisions about education, health, parenting, and retirement, the aspirational class reproduces wealth and upward mobility, deepening the ever-wider class divide.
Respected conservative journalist and commentator Timothy P. Carney continues the conversation begun with Hillbilly Elegy and the classic Bowling Alone in this hard-hitting analysis that identifies the true factor behind the decline of the American...
Here is armed America—a land of machine-gun gatherings in the desert, lederhosened German shooting societies, feral-hog hunts in Texas, and Hollywood gun armories. Whether they’re collecting antique weapons, practicing concealed carry, o...
A heartfelt, and riveting biography of the short life of a talented young African-American man who escapes the slums of Newark for Yale University only to succumb to the dangers of the streets—and of one’s own nature—when he return...
In Capital, Commonwealth Prize-winning author Rana Dasgupta examines one of the great trends of our time: the expansion of the global elite. Capital is an intimate portrait of the city of Delhi which bears witness to the extraordinary transmogrifica...
"If you want to know why international crooks and their eminently respectable financial advisors walk tall and only the little people pay taxes, this is the ideal book for you. Every politician and moneyman on the planet should read it, but they won...
From the beet fields of North Dakota to the wilderness campgrounds of California to an Amazon warehouse in Texas, people who once might have kicked back to enjoy their sunset years are hard at work. Underwater on mortgages or finding that Social Sec...
Protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and across the United States following the death of Michael Brown revealed something far deeper than a passionate display of age-old racial frustrations; they unveiled a public chasm that has been growing for years, a...
“A Perfect Storm for a new generation, Rachel Slade's Into the Raging Sea is a masterful page-turning account of the El Faro's sinking.”—Ben Mezrich, bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires: The Found...
Five hundred feet underground, Jeanne Marie Laskas asked a coal miner named Smitty, “Do you think it’s weird that people know so little about you?” He replied, “I don’t think people know too much about the way the whole...
{"id":"1982330","ean":"9781541482265","abr":"Unabridged","title":"The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class","subtitle":"A Theory of the Aspirational Class","author":"Elizabeth Currid-Halkett","rating_average":"0","narrator":"Rachel Dulude","ubr_id":"1982330","abr_id":"0","ubr_price":"16.99","abr_price":"0.00","ubr_memprice":"10.19","abr_memprice":"0.00","ubr_narrator":"Rachel Dulude","abr_narrator":"","ubr_length":"Unabridged: 8 hr 36 min","abr_length":"Abridged: "}
