15
In their decline, WASPs latched on to others. Although he was from an Irish Catholic background, JFK was co-opted as an honorary WASP and his Camelot was stuffed with WASPs. Beran calls this the ‘vampiric’ phase of WASPdom. In their burnt-out phase which followed, WASPs became the prey of other vampires. The typical WASP was male and spoke with a Mid-Atlantic accent. Many of them went to Groton, a private boarding school in Massachusetts, followed by Harvard. They joined the Porcellian Club. They were spectacularly rich. They suffered from ‘a love-sickness for power’. They started out as rich Puritans who felt guilty about their extreme wealth. There was something missing from their lives, a lack of fulfilment. While the rest of America was content with merely getting rich, the WASP yearned for more – some demonstration of civic virtue. The historian Henry Adams, descended from two US presidents, had envisioned regeneration in all aspects of American life, but there was also a tradition of seeking cultural fulfilment in another place and time – for Adams, it was medieval Chartres and Dante’s Inferno. The Depression introduced a rift
between reformist WASPs and Wall Street WASPs, and FDR was forced out of the Knickerbocker Club. While several English aristocrats became fascist fellow travellers in the 1930s, America’s WASPs worked to defeat Hitler and thereafter to ‘counter Soviet aggression’. Notable contributions – but their arrogance also ushered in the Vietnam War. At times, this book seems to flit from one lilypad to another. It is strong on educational institutions and politics, but says next to nothing about the Episcopalian church as an influence. It is suffused with learning and family folklore, and Beran dotes on misfits. His prose is lush, but his story proceeds at a breakneck pace. ‘There is, to be sure, great difficulty in writing about people whose time has passed, who were bathed in the lukewarm bath of snobbery, who, with flashes of insight, were largely mediocre, and who were as narrowly European in their culture as they were complacently white in the their pedigree arrogance,’ writes Beran. Nonetheless, he succeeds in humanising them and in recognising their virtues along with their vices. S
Nota bene
Deep Purpose By Ranjay Gulati (Penguin Business, £20, from 8 February)
‘A revolutionary approach to business does exist,’ Ranjay Gulati argues in his latest book. The Harvard economics professor adds that business leaders should forgo a ‘performance-at-all-costs mentality’. He unpacks the idea by analysing organisations such as Etsy, Lego, Microsoft and Mahindra, which, he says, have found powerful ways of ‘marrying long-term value and short- term performance’. Even before the book’s release, Adidas CEO Kasper Rørsted, Unilever’s Paul Polman and Hitachi’s Toshiaki Higashihara have all written gushing reviews.
The Voltage Effect By John A List (Penguin Business, £16.99, from 3 February)
University of Chicago economist John A List is an advocate of field-based experiments to analyse human behaviour. His quirky studies have seen him work with Virgin Atlantic pilots to improve fuel efficiency, and Uber and Lyft to improve their user experiences. Here he looks at why some business ideas soar and others sink. He notes that many nascent organisations primed for success flounder – or experience a ‘voltage drop’ – when they try to scale their operations. He looks for solutions to help them get ‘voltage gains’, ensuring that good ideas and policies can thrive.
The Global Merchants By Joseph Sassoon (Allen Lane, £30, from 24 February)
The Global Merchants tells the story of the Sassoons, an influential 19th-century trading family often dubbed the ‘Rothschilds of the East’ because of their roaringly successful business activities. After leaving Ottoman Baghdad, the family of Jewish refugees settled in India and built a colossal business trading cotton and opium. Joseph Sassoon dips into his family records to reveal a vivid portrait of the clan and its affairs. In detailing a major player in trade during times of empire, the book adds to our understanding of the development of modern economic globalisation.
Price Wars By Rupert Russell (Hachette, £20, from 27 January)
Having visited unstable countries and conflict zones across five continents, the writer and filmmaker Rupert Russell understands the impact of volatile commodity prices. In Price Wars, he argues that since 2010, erratic jolts in food and oil prices in the global south have been exacerbated by fund managers in New York and London – fuelling crises the world over and even contributing to ‘shock’ political results closer to home. Russell has produced a documentary film of the same name to accompany this sprawling critique of free markets.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100
