The Rise Of The Nouveaux Riches

There have been many books about Victorian and Edwardian houses, but this is the first to concentrate on the taste of the nouveaux riches. Not just the rich but the very rich: those who grew immensely wealthy in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution. Cotton, shipping, steel, real estate, diamonds, chemicals, banking, the stock market -- that was how they made their money. But what did they do with it? Where and how did they live? J. Mordaunt Crook, one of Britain's leading architectural historians, describes the houses of the richest of the new rich -- the Rothschilds, the Guinnesses, the Beits and the Brasseys, the Barings, the Wernhers, the Tennants, the Sassoons -- and explains the economic and social context that sustained their extraordinary lifestyles. In effect, he tells the story of the remaking of the British ruling class. Enhanced with numerous photos as well as excerpts from novels, diaries, and memoirs.

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)

The story of some of America'sl eading billionaires and how they made their fortunes.

Art Crossing Borders offers a thought-provoking analysis of the internationalisation of the art market during the long nineteenth century. Twelve experts, dealing with a wide variety of geographical, temporal, and commercial contexts, explore how the gradual integration of art markets structurally depended on the simultaneous rise of nationalist modes of thinking, in unexpected and ambiguous ways. By presenting a radically international research perspective Art Crossing Borders offers a crucial contribution to the field of art market studies.

In 1922, Adolphe Shrager having made his fortune during the First World War, approached the London dealer Basil Dighton for advice on purchasing antique furniture. Dighton sold him about five hundred items but shortly afterwards Shrager discovered that one of his 'collector's pieces' was judged to be a fake and grossly over-priced, and he sued. The trial, held in early 1923, became a cause celebre, but it can be viewed as a case study of a much wider set of social and cultural concerns: the fact that Shrager lost both the first trial and the appeal, despite demonstrating on numerous occasions that he had a clear case against Dighton, raises questions of race, prejudice and class, where the establishment closed ranks against Shrager, the nouveau riche Jew and alleged war profiteer. This book - the first on the Shrager Dighton case - is the result of the author's original archival research.

Today, states’ ability to borrow private capital depends on stringent evaluations of their creditworthiness. While many presume that this has long been the case, Quentin Bruneau argues that it is a surprisingly recent phenomenon—the outcome of a pivotal shift in the social composition of financial markets. Investigating the financiers involved in lending capital to sovereigns over the past two centuries, Bruneau identifies profound changes in their identities, goals, and forms of knowledge. He shows how an old world made up of merchant banking families pursuing both profit and status gradually gave way to a new one dominated by large companies, such as joint stock banks and credit rating agencies, exclusively pursuing profit. Lacking the web of personal ties to sovereigns across the world that their established rivals possessed, these financial institutions began relying on a different form of knowledge created to describe and compare states through quantifiable data: statistics. Over the course of this epochal shift, which only came to an end a few decades ago, financial markets thus reconceptualized states. Instead of a set of individuals to be known in person, they became numbers on a page. Raising new questions about the history of sovereign lending, this book illuminates the nature of the relationship between states and financial markets today—and suggests that it may be on the cusp of another major transformation.

London is one of the world’s greatest cities, and its architecture is a unique heritage. The Tower of London is an urban castle unique in Europe, St Paul’s is one of the world’s greatest domed cathedrals, and the squares and crescents of the West End inspired Haussmann’s Paris. In London, it is the variety of the streets, buildings, and parks that strikes the visitor. No king or government has ever set its mark here. Private ownership has shaped the city, and architects have served a wide variety of clients. London’s Classical era produced an elegant townscape between 1600 and 1830, but medieval, Tudor, and Victorian London were a potpourri of buildings large and small, each making its own design statement. In London: An Architectural History Anthony Sutcliffe takes the reader through two thousand years of architecture from the sublime to the mundane. With over 300 color illustrations the book is intended for the general reader and especially those visiting London for the first time.