My Lists
Featured Lists
Ruling America
a history of wealth and power in a democracy
By Fraser, Steve & Gerstle, Gary
- ISBN
- 978-0-67401-695-8
- Publisher
- Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2005.
REVIEWS
Library Journal
Reviewed on March 21, 2005
Even in a nation founded on the principles of freedom and equality, small, motivated groups wield inordinate amounts of power. The notion itself is straightforward, but the 11 historians contributing to this volume examine it rigorously, documenting the dominance of American ruling classes like the antebellum South's "slave power," the North's "Merchants and Manufacturers," the "nouveau riche industrialists" of the Gilded Age and the Cold War's "Foreign Policy Establishment." Each essay chronicles the myriad factors that led to the consolidation of power by one such set of aristocrats, and then explains the internal divisions and e...Log In or Sign Up to Read More
