History of the Rich and Fabulous
By Felicity Sargent
Manhattan Society has long been a favored topic for the upper echelon to debate, and those less fortunate to speculate. Taking a more sophisticated exploration than the tween book series-turned-T.V. series-with-a-cult-following Gossip Girl, the quick-witted British historian and author Nick Foulkes has complied an entire novel dissecting the evolution of New York’s upper class starting in the early seventeenth century and leading up to the present. Appropriately titled, High Society, you’ll find stories of legendary family names Frick, Morgan, Vanderbilt, and Astor and where they spent their time on the rise to fame and fortune—Le Grenouille, El Morocco and Le Cirque, to name a few. Foulkes narration makes insightful commentary on every political and social movement from past to present. As a small preview of the narrative, please note. “To suggest that by the eighteenth century New York had become a polite and genteel place would be wrong…New York was vulgar, flashy, and vibrant,” notes Foulkes. Regardless of whatever vulgarity may or may not still remain, I’ll take Manhattan any day.
Via http://www.momist.com/2008/12/high-society.html
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