The Right People

It’s no secret that the rich are different from the rest of us. But the rich as author Stephen Birmingham so insightfully points out are also different from the very rich. There’s Society and then there’s Real Society and it takes multiple generations for families of the former to become entrenched in the latter. Real Society is not about the money—or rather it’s not only about the money—it is about history breeding tradition and most of all the name.<BR /><BR />The Right People is an engrossing and illuminating journey through the customs and habits of the phenomenally wealthy from the San Francisco elite to the upper crust of New York’s Westchester County. It is a marvelously anecdotal intimately detailed overview of the lives of the American aristocracy: where they gather and dine; their games and sports clubs and parties friendships and feuds; their mating marriage and divorce rituals—a potpourri of priceless true stories featuring the Astors Goulds Vanderbilts Dukes Biddles and other lofty names from the pages of the Social Register.