Haves and Have Yachts

I saw this book in Hatchards just before a Eurostar journey to Belgium, and was very tempted to stick it in my bag, but I have some vouchers for Topping Books in Ely (my favourite bookshop) and will buy it from there instead.

The book explores the impact of the ultra-rich as a result of their excessive lifestyles. As the wealthy meet in Davos, this is a timely read I guess, and also connects with a chapter that I worked on for the forthcoming 'Discover Geography' book series on the theme of fairness. In that book I talk about the global super-rich and their lifestyles.

From the publisher's description of the book:

The ultrarich hold more of America’s wealth than they did in the heyday of the Carnegies and Rockefellers. In this incisive and provocative book, Evan Osnos offers an unforgettable portrait of the tactics and obsessions driving this new Gilded Age, in which superyachts, luxury bunkers, elite tax dodges and a torrent of political donations bespeak staggering disparities of wealth and power.

With deft storytelling and meticulous reporting, Osnos explores the indulgences, incentives and psychological distortions that define our time. He delves into the unprecedented influence Silicon Valley and Wall Street have on government, drawing on in-depth interviews with Mark Zuckerberg and other billionaires. 

He also exposes the hidden world of the ultrarich in all its outrageous, fabulous, ridiculous detail: a private wealth manager who broke with members of an American dynasty and spilled their secrets; the pop stars who perform at lavish parties for thirteen-year-olds; the status anxieties that spill out of marinas in Monaco and Palm Beach like real-world episodes of Succession and The White Lotus.

Originally published in the New Yorker, these essays have been revised and expanded to deliver an unflinching portrait of the rise of America’s modern oligarchy. 

Osnos’s essays are a wake-up call – a case against complacency in the face of unchecked excess, as the choices of the ultrarich ripple through our lives. Entertaining, unsettling and eye-opening, The Haves and Have-Yachts couldn’t be more relevant to today’s world.

Here's the author talking about the book: