Plutocrats

Forget the 1% - it's time to get to grips with the 0.1% ... There has always been some gap between rich and poor, but it has never been wider - and now the rich are getting wealthier at such breakneck speed that the middle classes are being squeezed out. While the wealthiest 10% of Americans, for example, receive half the nation's income, the real money flows even higher up, in the top 0.1%. As a transglobal class of highly successful professionals, these self-made oligarchs often have more in common with one another than with their own countrymen. But how is this happening, and who are the people making it happen? Chrystia Freeland, acclaimed business journalist and Global Editor-at-Large of Reuters, has unprecedented access to the richest and most successful people on the planet, from Davos to Dubai, and dissects their lives with intelligence, empathy and objectivity. Pacily written and powerfully researched, Plutocrats could not provide a more timely insight into the current state of Capitalism and its most wealthy players. 'A superb piece of reportage ... a tremendous illumination' (New Statesman on Freeland's previous title, Sale of the Century)

Forget the 1 per cent- it's time to focus on the wealthiest 0.1 per cent who are outpacing the rest of use at breakneck speed. There has always been a gap between rich and poor, but over the last few decades what it means to be rich has changed dramatically. What's changed is more than numbers. Instead of inheritance, today's colossal fortunes have been amassed by a new transglobal class of self-made oligarchs. But who are they and how did they do it - and as the chasm between the super-rich and everyone else deepens, is there anything we can do about it? Cracking open this tight-knit world is Chrystia Freeland. From Davos to Dubai, she has reported on these new super elites for the last two decade. Grounding her interviews in the economics and history of modern capitalism, Freeland shows us the new wealth and its consequences- whether it's the internal Citigroup memo that urges clients to design portfolios for the international 'Plutonomy' rather than nations, $3,000,000 banker's birthday parties or the extent of the discreet but phenomenal wealth of the 'red oligarchs', China's new ruling political class. A consummate journalist and industry specialist, Chrystia Freeland dissects the lives of the world's wealthiest individuals with intelligence, realism and deep insight. Alarmingly insightful and refreshingly non-partisan, Plutocratsis the missing piece in our political conversation.

A Financial Times Best Book of the Year Shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize There has always been some gap between rich and poor in this country, but recently what it means to be rich has changed dramatically. Forget the 1 percent—Plutocrats proves that it is the wealthiest 0.1 percent who are outpacing the rest of us at breakneck speed. Most of these new fortunes are not inherited, amassed instead by perceptive businesspeople who see themselves as deserving victors in a cutthroat international competition. With empathy and intelligence, Plutocrats reveals the consequences of concentrating the world’s wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Propelled by fascinating original interviews with the plutocrats themselves, Plutocrats is a tour de force of social and economic history, the definitive examination of inequality in our time.

In the last few decades what it means to be rich has changed dramatically. Forget the 1%; it's the wealthiest .01% who are fast outpacing the rest of us. Today's colossal fortunes are amassed by the diligent toiling of smart, perceptive businessmen who see themselves as deserving victors in a cutthroat international competition. Cracking open this tight-knit world is Chrystia Freeland, an acclaimed business journalist. At ease in Davos or Dubai, Freeland has reported on the lives and minds of these new super-elites for nearly a decade. Grounding her interviews in the economics and history of modern capitalism, she provides examples of the new wealth and its consequences. She showcases the $3 million birthday party of a New York financier months before the financial meltdown; details the closed-door 2005 SEC meeting where the US government allowed investment banks to write their own regulatory laws; and tells how the Bank of Canada's Mark Carney became a key figure in the central battle between the plutocracy and the rest of us. Brightly written and powerfully researched, Freeland's Plutocrats will be a lightning rod event in the midst of the US election season.

The Poor and the Plutocrats is an examination of financial inequality. From Apple, the first trillion-dollar company, at one end of the spectrum to those living in dire poverty on the other, Francis Teal explains how a world has emerged where both of these extremes co-exist.

2051. The world's largest company, The Company, has seized power on a planetary scale and runs the world as if it were a business. In a plutocracy, the richer one is, the more powerful one is. In this context, an anonymous citizen becomes compelled to uncover how the world came to this situation, without paying any attention to the official version. Several members of the government end up encouraging him to carry out this investigation by giving him access to all information. He decides to discover the true history of The Company and the various interests that are trying to influence his investigation.

This data-driven book offers insight into the fallacy of widespread opportunity, the fate of the middle class, and the mechanisms that perpetuate income disparity.

When the German-Jewish Rothschild family founded a chain of banks in Frankfurt, London, Paris, Vienna and Naples, it made them the world's richest in the 19th century. Lionel, Anthony, Nathaniel and Mayer were the first British-born members of this incredible family; this is the story of their triumph over prejudice and bigotry to become the first Jews accepted into the upper echelons of English and European society. Numbering among their friends Gladstone, Disraeli, Browning, Tennyson and Dickens, they lived in a style surpassing that of even today's richest. Written with the co-operation of the family and unique access to previously unseen archives, this biography reveals the intimate lives, lifestyles and difficulties of this most fascinating of families whose name remains a byword for wealth.