The Beneficiary: Fortune, Misfortune, and the Story of My Father

by Janny Scott

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

"[A] poignant addition to the literature of moneyed glamour and its inevitable tarnish and decay...like something out of Fitzgerald or Waugh."--The New Yorker

A parable for the new age of inequality: part family history, part detective story, part history of a vanishing class, and a vividly compelling exploration of the degree to which an inheritance--financial, cultural, genetic--conspired in one person's self-destruction.

Land, houses, and money tumbled from one generation to the next on the eight-hundred-acre estate built by Scott's investment banker great-grandfather on Philadelphia's Main Line. There was an obligation to protect it, a license to enjoy it, a duty to pass it on--but it was impossible to know in advance how all that extraordinary good fortune might influence the choices made over a lifetime.

In this warmly felt tale of an American family's fortunes, journalist Janny Scott excavates the rarefied world that shaped her charming, unknowable father, Robert Montgomery Scott, and provides an incisive look at the weight of inheritance, the tenacity of addiction, and the power of buried secrets.

Some beneficiaries flourished, like Scott's grandmother, Helen Hope Scott, a socialite and celebrated horsewoman said to have inspired Katherine Hepburn's character in the play and Academy Award-winning film The Philadelphia Story. For others, including the author's father, she concludes, the impact was more complex.

Bringing her journalistic talents, light touch, and crystalline prose to this powerful story of a child's search to understand a parent's puzzling end, Scott also raises questions about our new Gilded Age. New fortunes are being amassed, new estates are being born. Does anyone wonder how it will all play out, one hundred years hence?

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, History, Biography Memoir, Family, Book Club

288 pages, Hardcover

First published April 16, 2019

About the author

Janny Scott is the author of "The Beneficiary: Fortune, Misfortune, and the Story of My Father" (April 16, 2019) and "A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother." She was a reporter for The New York Times from 1994 to 2008 and was a member of the Times reporting team that won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for the series "How Race is Lived in America." She was previously a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and The Record of Bergen County, New Jersey. Her first book, a New York Times bestseller, was the runner up for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography and one of Time magazine's top ten nonfiction books of 2011. She is a graduate of Harvard College and lives in New York City. https://jannyscott.com/

Reviews

[Valerity (Val) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the style in which this was written, kind of felt to me like a well written historical novel, but it’s non-fiction instead. It starts out with a family tree, showing the major players, the patriarch the Colonel who started the grand estate named Ardrossan with 800 acres back in the day, down to the present-day narrator who is an offspring. It tells about major people down through the years but is about the author’s father. It shares how he’d gotten rich almost overnight during the Panic of 1907 when he started buying up small businesses. His family felt he’d cut his life short through choices he’d made in the way he did things. Author Janny Scott just seriously felt that her father could have made different choices and lived a good deal longer, thus being around for his family more. It’s an intriguing look into this family of privilege during the end of a bygone era.  My thanks for the advance electronic review copy that was provided by Edelweiss, author Janny Scott, and the publisher.

Also in my BookZone blog:
https://wordpress.com/post/bookblog20...

[Jane · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oy. What a numbing catalog of wealth and power. Reading this was like being caught in a relentless avalanche of famous names. I suppose Janny Scott, in writing this monument to her family's history,
hoped to extend its glamor for one more generation, but really, who but she cares about these long-dead debs and their boozy beaux? She compares her grandmother to Eloise of the Plaza - sorry, Janny, your granny hadn't an ounce of Kay Thompson's style, creativity and wit - she just had a lot of money. And Ardrossan, the estate? Philadelphia's idea of a grand British country house. Ho-hum. I'll take Chatsworth any day.

[Amy Linton · Rating 3 out of 5]

New York Times reporter Janny Scott grew up not understanding that the 800-acre family pile on the Philadelphia Main Line was extraordinary. Her grandmother –– the inspiration for Katherine Hepburn's character in the Philadelphia Story –– and grandfather both were the scion of robber baron fortunes.

The memoir is thoughtful and well-written, enjoyable, in its way, as the view out the window out of the Main Line itself. Such excess! Such wealth! So many personalities! I might have liked a tighter thematic focus –– I wasn't sure whose story Scott was meaning to tell, though it all comes down to the inadequacies of money to solve family trouble...

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will read any book about the Kennedys and, similarly, any book about a well-known, Gilded Age-type family. Scott's memoir is beautifully written and because she's a journalist first and foremost, it has a certain feel to it not found in similar works (but it's subtle, not constantly announcing itself as "this is a piece of journalism!"). It can be a little confusing at times with the various generations and names, but the author tells you herself not to focus too much on memorizing them, and this is good advice. Interesting and devastating and had me googling for hours. I also appreciated the greater look at the Gilded Age families and their loss of wealth, or their loss of grand estates, many of which didn't last 50 years.

[Sally · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book but really, really didn’t. Too many people from too many generations and the author hops from one to another before skipping back two generations or forward three. I needed a family tree. But everything is listed... the wardrobe, the food at a meal, the books in the library. I just didn’t care and still don’t. Wouldn’t recommend.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actual rating 2.5 stars

Enjoyed this for the Main Line history, but felt the story could have been condensed considerably

[Mike Coleman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Were your parents happy when you were growing up? If you find when you're an adult that there is evidence, lots of it, to support a decidedly non-affirmative answer to the question, how do you accept it and move on? That's Janny Scott's quest in this gutsy, remarkable memoir.

Scott sets out to understand why her father drank himself to death. It sounds grim, but her father, Robert Montgomery Scott, was a son of the woman who was the model for Tracy Lord, the Main Line socialite heroine played by Katherine Hepburn in Philip Barry's The Philadelphia Story, and so the story of the three generations of his wealthy and eccentric family who made their fortune in the railroad in the latter part of the 19th century is a fascinating read. Their saga is an entertaining history of the American industrial economy and the people who extravagantly rode its crest into the early part of the 20th century.

These people were smart, well-traveled, well-educated, patrons of the arts, darlings of the press, even successful cattle farmers. (They were known for the Ayrshire cattle they raised in the shadow of Ardrossan, the spectacular estate built by Scott's grandfather, with Scott's mother as the capable rancher in charge for many years, the only rancher with a meticulously arranged closetful of designer dresses in "the big house." She could carry a book on her own, yet the story here always comes back to the author's father.)

Aided in her quest by the discovery of a carefully packed box holding years of her father's journals, the author conducts a journalist's clear-eyed post-mortem of his alcoholism, zoning in on it in the last third of the book in a way that is heartbreaking in its frankness. Her father didn't struggle with alcohol. He surrendered to it, danced with it, parried with it occasionally, but clearly never intended to give it up. The last time she saw him, he'd been drinking so much that his stomach was bloated like a basketball and his face looked like it had been burned, she writes--he, the former golden boy, sophisticated, handsome, athletic, revered and loved by many in his role as president of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, now a dying man in his 70s in a family whose progenitors were known to live well into their 90s. Gone too soon. A family history of alcoholism, and a penchant for holding himself in low regard--he apparently regretted never having been able to escape the family's secure, moneyed embrace--did their part.

Scott's description of the family intervention, which included her father's mistress at the time, and her father's attempt at rehab, is chilling, as one by one the truth dawns on all parties concerned: "This isn't working, is it?"

I like this passage near the end of the book, after Scott confesses she wasn't fully forthcoming with the press when they asked about the cause of her father's death in 2005. "If you were to ask me now, I'd say my father drank himself to death. But that leaves a lot unsaid. I’ve come to think of his disease as something more complex, shaped by the whims of economic and social history, along with the strands of the double helix. He was the beneficiary of abundant good fortune, that’s a fact. But good fortune doesn’t necessarily drop from the heavens unencumbered. Like the rest of us, he had his wounds."

And this one. "Land, houses, money: Wealth had tumbled in my father’s family from one generation to the next. Each new descendant arrived as an unwitting conduit for its transmission. You had a right to enjoy it, an obligation to protect it, a duty to pass it on to your own unsuspecting children. It was a stroke of good fortune, of course. But what you could never know, starting out, was how those things would influence decisions you’d make over a lifetime. You might resolve to live as though that wealth didn’t exist, but sooner or later it would probably insinuate itself into your thinking about jobs, profession, marriage, children. Some beneficiaries flourished. Some didn’t. For some, the impact of all that good fortune appeared to have been mixed. My father, I began to think, had sensed the conundrum early on, in that earliest day."

As the book's title character, the author does a magnificent job dissecting the conundrum, understanding the gifts and the risks it has passed on to her. In surely one of the most stunning epilogues ever to grace a work of non-fiction, she takes a few steps away from her subject, speculating as to where the next great generation of wealth will locate itself and succumb to the same costs of privilege. "Somewhere in the world," she writes, "a new 'place' is being born. Maybe it's in the Bay Area or Mumbai or Shenzhen or Hangzou... The titans of the new gilded age, like their predecessors, wish to be known for their superior taste.... But the rules of the consumption game appear to not be all that different.... Do they ever wonder how it will all play out, one hundred years hence?"

With The Beneficiary, Janny Scott provides a portrait of that 'place'--and a cautionary tale of what might happen to those who find it.

[Book Club Mom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here’s an interesting biography of Robert Montgomery Scott, written by his daughter Janny Scott. It’s actually a family history, spanning four generations of a wealthy family that settled on what’s called the Main Line outside of Philadelphia. In the early 1900s, Janny Scott’s great grandfather acquired over 800 acres of rolling land in Radnor, Pennsylvania, named it Ardrossan, and built a stone mansion, plus many other luxurious homes, farm buildings and cottages to house his family and the people who worked for him. Most of the first three generations lived in various homes on Ardrossan, including cousins and sometimes less than enthusiastic in-laws.

Locals will recognize the family names and their roles in business and law, especially the financial services firm, Janney Montgomery Scott. Robert Montgomery Scott was also a longtime president of the Philadelphia Museum and the family had a strong presence in business and among the wealthy.

A playwright named Philip Barry met Janny Scott’s grandfather at Harvard and wrote The Philadelphia Story. The Broadway play was produced in 1939 and starred Katherine Hepburn. Her character was based on Edgar Scott’s wife, Helen Hope Montgomery. The movie of the same name hit the theaters in 1940 and starred Hepburn, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart.

Although united by wealth, there were plenty of divisions and a great deal of power struggles, plus a debilitating history of alcoholism in the family. Robert Montgomery Scott, who died in 2005, was a charmer and a schmoozer, but his later years were marked by this disease.

Janny Scott wrote this book in order to know her father a little better. A prolific writer, he left a lifetime of personal journals to her, which were both painful and insightful to read.

I enjoyed this biography because of its local interest and also because I like reading about mansions and their history. What strikes me most is how stunted many of these family members were and also how out of touch they were with the rest of the world. Interestingly, the author’s generation branched out and became independent in their lives and careers.

I recommend The Beneficiary to readers who like biographies and studies of family history.

[Joan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a local family's story and in my opinion, should have been promoted as that - because the author's Father wasn't really brought into the picture seriously until after halfway. I did enjoy learning about the rest of the family and it certainly enriched the story.

I'm still struggling with the fact that a daughter would want to write about her father in such an unfavorable way (airing his dirty laundry) rather than having empathy for the fact that he had a disease - alcoholism. Perhaps she could have simply written an article about him to get it out of her system, rather than a book that will be circulated more readily among people who knew him. It's sad.

The writing style - you could tell it was written by a journalist and not a novelist or storyteller, which left me a bit disappointed. Despite this, I finished the book and wanted to know the whole story.

I'm not sure how interesting this book would be to those who didn't grow up in the Philadelphia area with the familiar family names.

[LAPL Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

We hear a lot these days about “the 1%” -- those Americans who are wealthier than 99% of the nation’s population. Janny Scott, a New York Times reporter, who has also written a biography of Barack Obama’s mother, knows about this group from the inside, because she grew up in a family that was definitely part of the 1%--the Montgomery/Scott clan of Villanova, Pennsylvania, in the posh Philadelphia suburbs known as the Main Line.

In 1909, Janny’s great-grandfather, Col. R. L. Montgomery, an investment banker, purchased about 800 acres of land along the Main Line and built a 50-room, 33,000-square-foot mansion there that he called Ardrossan, after his family’s hometown in Scotland. In the decades that followed, Ardrossan and its numerous outbuildings became the home to several generations of Montgomery descendants, including the Colonel’s eldest daughter, Helen Hope Montgomery, who was Janny’s grandmother. Helen Hope married railroad heir Edgar Scott, and they became leading society figures of their day, with friends who included novelist John O’Hara and playwright Philip Barry. Barry, a Harvard classmate of Edgar’s, dedicated his play The Philadelphia Story to Hope and Edgar Scott, and he clearly based the play’s setting on the Ardrossan estate. Hope herself is often claimed to be the inspiration for its heroine, Tracy Lord, but her granddaughter, who knew her well, feels that Tracy was really based on the actress for whom she was written--Katharine Hepburn--also a friend of the Scotts.

It would appear that these people had everything they needed to make their lives satisfying and successful--wealth, intelligence, good looks, and a beautiful place to live. Indeed, Hope and Edgar seem to have had very happy lives during the 70 years they were married, aside from an infidelity or misunderstanding here and there. So why did their younger son, Robert Montgomery “Bobby” Scott, who also spent most of his life living at Ardrossan, wind up drinking himself to death, in spite of looks, charm, a law career, and a very successful 14-year stint as president of the Philadelphia Museum of Art? That’s what Janny, his daughter, sets out to discover in this penetrating look at her family’s legacy and what it did to “Bobby” Scott. It was no secret to his wife and children that Bobby kept a journal for most of his adult life, but he never left it lying around for others to read; his daughter admits that she would have done so if given the opportunity. When she was a young woman, he told her that he was leaving her his journals, because she was the writer in the family, but at the time of his death, their whereabouts were unknown. It was not until several years later that Janny discovered them packed neatly away in a closet and read them from beginning to end.

She discovered that the father she idolized as a child and young woman was, from at least his mid-20s, deeply dissatisfied with his life. He felt he’d taken the wrong career path, married the wrong woman, but also felt powerless to break free from the choices dictated by his heritage and wealth. As the years passed, drinking increasingly served as a means of escape from his sense of hopelessness, and even a family intervention and a stint in rehab could not permanently alter the trajectory his life had taken.

While Bobby Scott’s troubling story forms the center of this narrative, his daughter uses her journalistic research skills to objectively examine other family members and how enormous wealth influenced their lives. The book’s title refers to Bobby’s position as one of the six beneficiaries of the Ardrossan estate trust, but Janny Scott also sees her entire family as beneficiaries--of a heritage that gave them options unavailable to others, but also came with challenging obligations and expectations.

Reviewed by Robert Anderson, Librarian, Literature & Fiction Department

[Sharon Pasternack · Rating 2 out of 5]

Growing up as a north-east Philly girl, I was intrigued to read this book to feel what it was really like to grow up in that other prosperous neighborhood west of the city - the Main Line.
That is exactly what is presented, in a sort of dry, non-fiction manner. I probably learned a few things and smiled at a few memories. I do not consider this a “can’t put it down” read. If you don’t have a vested interest and/or know a bit of the history, you may even be a little bored or confused by the flow.

[Grace Hoffmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Second half about her dad better than the first half about the ancestors, although I get that she feels it's all connected. She tries to seem very matter of fact about the vast wealth amassed by her ancestors, but that part feels a little forced to me. She writes vividly about her dad and his struggle though -- no self pity on his end which is a admirable trait of that class and generation.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thirst for beautiful writing muddied the arc of the story. I was tossed between characters jarringly and wish the transitions had been clearer. One moment is plot/character build; the next is commentary. Unfortunate, because Scott is no doubt masterful at the language, but storytelling not so much.

[Daniel Schulof · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great sentence-craft and genuinely impressive research. But the “who cares?” factor is off the charts. Maybe someone out there is more interested than I am in the minor trials and tribulations of America’s blue bloods, but I couldn’t find nearly enough motivation to keep the dozens of characters straight. I found it profoundly disinteresting.

[Mrtruscott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very mixed, low 3* verging on 2*.

Janny Scott’s emotions eventually lost the battle with her journalism credentials.

One theme, buried under many layers of family dysfunction, was Scott’s message to today’s nouveau riche. She touched on the effect that too many dollars and not enough sense can and will have on future generations.

European families have long known about the burden of maintaining actual buildings and land. Those darn castles, so expensive.

Much as Scott may have wanted her family’s story to be unique, it was, sadly, just not that distinctive in the tales of the Very Very Rich or the Very Very Dysfunctional. Mostly it was just sad.

I wish this book could be revised to have a more coherent message for today’s newly rich, as they hurtle toward footnote status like so many of those Main Line families.

Once the money is gone — and it does go — and the property is sold to settle the inevitable taxes, divorces, and family disputes — there’s not much to remember.

If Bill Gates had been able to encourage this family (and others like it) to donate their fortunes, we would all be the beneficiaries.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book immensely. Years ago I worked for a large, renowned corporate law firm in Philadelphia. As I read Janny Scott's book about her lawyer father, his family, and the dysfunction that plagued these people of privilege, my mind traveled back to that law firm. Many of the lawyers there came from prominent Main Line Philadelphia families; in fact, the last names featured in this book were familiar ones.

Janny Scott's book provided more than a glimpse into that world of the nouveau riche.

The Scott family's pedigree carried no guarantee of sound mental health, as Janny Scott made clear in her book. Though they spared no expense in providing their offspring with solid educational opportunities, material comforts, and hefty inheritances, the parents showed a deficit in spending time with, and showing love and affection to, their children.

Janny Scott's grandparents derived pleasure from alcohol, parties, and summering in upper-crust locales. They featured in the society pages regularly, while their children usually kept company with the nannies, taking whatever scattered fragments of time the parents afforded them.

Evidence of these privations appear as the author's father reaches adulthood, at which point it is hard not to feel very sorry for him and for anyone who grew up with worldly advantages, but without the most important acquisitions - love, affection, and attention from the people who should matter most, their parents.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This author pulls the curtain back on her Main Line family’s history with candor and grace. Having spent my life in the area, the book held my interest and reminded me that all families are simultaneously infinitely unique and similar. I kept thinking of the maxim, “If we all aired our dirty laundry, we would each choose our own.”

[Jmoore · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don’t bother!

[Elaine Davenport · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring- could not finish

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am abandoning this one. Just don't care about a bunch of really privileged rich people.

[Carole · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well written, deeply researched account of the author's Main Line family. She searches to understand her father, rich famous and withdrawn. He is the third generation of fabulous wealth generated in the time of robber barons and manifested in hundreds of acres of rolling farmland crowned by the "big house " of sumptuous proportions outside Philadelphia. She soberly analyzes her fortunate heritage and the colorful characters who inhabited it, Discovering a trove of diaries after his death, she learns of the inner struggles of her father who increasingly relies on alcohol as he navigates his refined world of wealth and infludnce. The story is absorbing and ultimately sad. Jenny completely understands the irony a d often destructive impact of unearned wealth in today's world.

[Donna Shaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

This author wants to know more about her parents and ancestors. As she delves into their history she learns of the growth of wealth in her family and how it affected the heirs. She also learns of the lifestyle expections they placed on themselves when they could no longer financially support it. Money doesn't always last and it certainly doesn't provide happiness and lack of problems for themselves and their heirs.

[Pam Cipkowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating glimpse into the life of a storied family buoyed by generations of wealth. It is also an account about alcoholism and how it can affect even those who seem to have it all. The history of the family estate, Ardrossan, is an equally riveting piece of the story in this family saga of one of the last aristocratic dynasties in the United States. By virtue of it being a story told over several generations, it drags a bit in parts, but it is a spectacular picture of the human side of a family mired in money, prestige, and inherited wealth. I enjoyed the numerous photographs, and wished there were even more. And the family tree with photos was helpful, as I kept referring back to it. A spectacular read.

[Kristin Kopple · Rating 1 out of 5]

Actually I couldn’t even finish it, I was so put off by the author’s attitudes towards her family’s extraordinary privilege. Sometimes she seems to sneer at it, and at others she feigns indifference, and never does she hold herself or her family accountable for it.

[Jymette Seager · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting but not much redeeming value in this book. I wanted to see a silver lining, but I never glimpsed one. True story.

[Laurie Dickey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not for everyone. But I enjoyed this fascinating inner look into old Philadelphia high society. Another world, for sure.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

It makes sense that the author is an NYT writer; this felt a little like investigative reporting. I was sold on the Tracy Lord angle, but what sucked me in was the exploration of family history, legacy, fortune, and misfortune. It's fascinating how incredible wealth can tie people into toxic relationship patterns and family dynamics and keep them captive against their real needs. Also, how hard it is for children to really know their parents, especially when muffled by so much wealth and baggage, and how much more free people can be among newcomers than those who are closest to them.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is tricky for me to review. It is a biography of a man written by his daughter.
It is an interesting insight into one of the wealthy families of Philadelphia, which was once the center of high society. However I feel the author may have been too emotionally involved with her subjects to write a beautiful interpretation.
The chapters were a little...mmm...disjointed (?) for me. There were a few passages which seemed to have been fully copied from one chapter to another...which was a bit “eye-roll inducing” for me.
The author did reference two of my favorite movies though...The Philadelphia Story and Holiday. (I own a DVD of the latter.)
I enjoyed it, but I thought it could have been better. Sadly I am not a professional writer nor editor, so I can’t give any good reasons for it. My amateur brain simply says it is so.

[Richard Jespers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Journalist Janny Scott limns a harrowing portrait of her father, Robert Montgomery Scott, yet his story does not begin that way. Between the dedication and epigraph pages of the book appears a family tree extending back three generations. From a vast variety of sources, Scott brings to light the larger-than-life characters who are her ancestors, one set of grandparents and two sets of great-grandparents. Most persons would not necessarily know that much about their people, but for generations this family live off the good fortune and largesse of Thomas A. Scott, a railroad baron of the nineteenth century. They live on one property, Ardrossan, larger than New York’s Central Park, west of Philadelphia. Scott’s grandmother, flamboyant Helen Hope Montgomery, is the real-life personage upon which Katherine Hepburn’s character is based in the 1940 film, The Philadelphia Story. There is so much spectacle in this family, people who can, and do, almost anything they wish to do, that we almost lose sight of the subject of the book, Janny Scott’s father.

At one point, when journalist Scott is young and becomes interested in writing, her father promises her possession of his journals one day. Through the years the promise is lost, both because she puts the idea on a back burner and because her father is apparently reluctant to hand them over. Following his death, from a long bout with alcoholism, Janny Scott unearths them in one of those hiding-in-plain-sight locations, where all she must do is recall the four-digit default household code to unlatch his trunk, and voila, there they are: decades of notebooks full of loose-leaf pages. Scott magically (it’s really arduous work, one must realize) gathers all of her sources, including this gold mine, and produces a portrait of her father, the beneficiary of generations of great fortune. Only, the portrayal of a human life is never that simple. The rich—we often don’t have much sympathy for them—have a uniquely difficult time in life. They often wield too much power for their own good, and Scott herself says it best:

“The diaries, I began to think, were an inheritance of sorts—unanticipated, undeserved, a stroke of fortune. But, like an inheritance, they came at a cost. Land, houses, money: Wealth had tumbled in my father’s family from one generation to the next. Each new descendant arrived as an unwitting conduit for its transmission. You had a right to enjoy it, an obligation to protect it, a duty to pass it on to your own unsuspecting children. It was a stroke of good fortune, of course. But what you could never know, starting out, was how those things would influence decisions you’d make over a lifetime” (220).

In the epilogue, Scott makes clear that the Scott money ran out. Descendants of the railroad baron now live as far away as Los Angeles or Paris and many points in between. “They work in education, medicine, technology, consulting, music, banking, business, finance, landscape gardening, the law. They don’t live in big houses. They work for a living. But they’re beneficiaries, in one way or another, now and forever, for better and worse” (260).

As any good journalist, Scott knows when to remove herself from the story, always maintaining that important distance. At the same time, she lets us in on one of life’s greatest secrets, yet also a platitude, that money alone cannot buy happiness.

[Christine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kind of an obvious (non fiction) story of the perils of having things too easy in life.