02872cam a2200277 4500 1023543207 TxGeo 20231027120000.0 ||||||s2023||||||||||||||||||||||||und|u 9780802161888 080216188X f11b36f7-7a21-4e8a-bcb7-0829c57c66f9 OverDrive (Reserve ID) 9804720 OverDrive (Product ID) TxGeo Gross, Michael, 1952- Flight of the WASP [Libby eBook] : The Rise, Fall, and Future of America's Original Ruling Class. Grove Atlantic, 2023. Format: OverDrive Adobe EPUB eBook, Filesize: 5489B. Format: OverDrive OverDrive Read. HTML:<p><b>Fifteen families.Four hundred years. The complex saga of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite in America's history.</b></p> <p>For decades, writers from Cleveland Amory to Joseph Alsop to the editors of <i>Politico</i> have proclaimed the diminishment of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, who for generations were the dominant socio-cultural-political force in America. While the WASP elite has, in the last half century, indeed drifted from American centrality to the periphery, its relevance and impact remain, as Michael Gross reveals in his compelling chronicle.</p> <p>From Colonial America's founding settlements through the Gilded Age to the present day, Gross traces the complex legacy of American WASPs—their profound accomplishments and egregious failures—through the lives of fifteen influential individuals and their very privileged, sometimes intermarried families. As the Bradford, Randolph, Morris, Biddle, Sanford, Peabody and Whitney clans progress, prosper and periodically stumble, defining aspects in the four-century sweep of American history emerge: our wide, oft-contentious religious diversity; the deep scars of slavery, genocide, and intolerance; the creation and sometime mis-use of astonishing economic and political power; an enduring belief in the future; an instinct to offset inequity with philanthropy; an equal capacity for irresponsible, sometimes wanton, behavior.</p> <p>"American society was supposed to be different," writes Gross, "but for most of our history we have had a patriciate, an aristocracy, a hereditary oligarchic upper class, who initiated the American national experiment." In previous acclaimed books such as <i>740 Park</i> and <i>Rogues' Gallery</i>, Gross has explored elite culture in microcosm; expanding the canvas, <i>Flight of the WASP</i> chronicles it across four centuries and fifteen generations in an ambitious and consequential contribution to American history.</p>. Biography & Autobiography. Nonfiction. History. Media Type: eBook. Importer Version: 2014-01-08.01 Import Date: 2023-10-26 20:00:02. QS5