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Richi$tan: A Journey Through the 21st Century Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich by Robert Frank (view source)
Revision as of 09:59, 11 May 2018
, 09:59, 11 May 2018no edit summary
{{infoboxinfobox1
|title=Richi$tan: A Journey Through the 21st Century Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich
|author=Robert Frank
|reviewer=Zoe PageMorris
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Are you rich? Am I? Should one want to be rich? How rich is rich? This is a fascinating inside look at what life is like for the über-wealthy.
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=256
|publisher=Piatkus Books
|date=2 Jul July 2007
|isbn=978-0749928230
|amazonukcover=<amazonuk>0749928239</amazonuk>|amazonusaznuk=0749928239|aznus=<amazonus>0307339262</amazonus>
}}
I thought, at first, that this book might be a bit dry. I feared it might be boring, repetitive, and filled with facts everyone already knows from flicking through newspapers, reading interviews with big wigs and watching the odd reality TV show. But then I spotted the two hotties in string bikinis, lounging on a yacht on the front cover, and I began to think it might be quite a fun, entertaining book after all.
''My friends made fun of me,'' complains one gentleman, who ended up bowing to peer pressure and returning the $50,000 car he'd just bought his girlfriend, exchanging it instead for one worth more than double that.
I thought this book was brilliant. It has such an easy, accessible tone that you can read it as if it's a trashy magazine rather than a formal business style book, but the references at the back clearly show that there's substance to the facts to match that latter genre rather than the trashy mag. Reading the first few pages I was instantly reminded of the Imogen Edwards-Jones exposé series '' ... Babylon'' especially [[''Hotel Babylon]] '' which provides similar insight into the gaping divide between them and us, the rich and those who service them.
There were some truly fascinating revelations in the book that show this other world in a way you would never imagine, and though the positives and negatives are balanced (after the section on a guy who made it big, there's another on someone who lost it all) I can't help feeling a little inspired right now, as if I've suddenly been made aware of a new life out there that is more than a little appealing to me.
{{amazontext|amazon=0749928239}}
{{amazonUStext|amazon=0749928239}}
{{commenthead}}
|name=Magda
|verb=said
|comment= But doesn't the authors make any moral judgements about the world which allows, no, approves of such level of personal wealth and the concominant inequalities?
}}
{{comment
|name=Zoë
|verb=replied
|comment= The author does and he doesn't. He certainly acknowledges the pressure such a world puts on the "ordinary" folk who try to keep up and who often go into debt before they invariably fail in their keeping up attempts (thanks to the ever-increasing gap between the rich and the poor). But he also discusses the many new service and luxury gifts industries that such wealth has spawned. The figures quoted with regards to how many lower level jobs are directly and indirectly created and supported by each of these really rich people are quite astonishing.
}}
{{comment
|name=Magda
|verb=said
|comment= Yes. How kind of them.
(It's the first time there's been a butler shortage in the UK since the 19th century).
}}