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Quiet Street: On American Privilege
A bold and deeply personal exploration of wealth, power, and the American elite, exposing how the ruling class—intentionally or not—perpetuates cycles of injustice
"[A] story about American inequity, and how it mindlessly, immorally, reproduces itself. Unlike most such stories, however, this one left me believing in the possibility...of drastic change." —Maggie Nelson, author of On Freedom
Nick McDonell grew up on New York City’s Upper East Side, a neighborhood defined by its wealth and influence. As a child, McDonell enjoyed everything that rarefied world entailed—sailing lessons in the Hamptons, school galas at the Met, and holiday trips on private jets. But as an adult, he left it behind to become a foreign correspondent in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In Quiet Street, McDonell returns to the sidewalks of his youth, exhuming with bracing honesty his upbringing and those of his affluent peers. From Galápagos Island cruises and Tanzanian safaris to steely handshakes and schoolyard microaggressions to fox-hunting rituals and the courtship rites of sexually precocious tweens, McDonell examines the rearing of the ruling class in scalpel-sharp detail, documenting how wealth and power are hoarded, encoded, and passed down from one generation to the next. What’s more, he demonstrates how outsiders—the poor, the nonwhite, the suburban—are kept out.
Searing and precise yet ultimately full of compassion, Quiet Street examines the problem of America’s one percent, whose vision of a more just world never materializes. Who are these people? How do they cling to power? What would it take for them to share it? Quiet Street looks for answers in a universal coming to terms with the culture that made you.
"[A] story about American inequity, and how it mindlessly, immorally, reproduces itself. Unlike most such stories, however, this one left me believing in the possibility...of drastic change." —Maggie Nelson, author of On Freedom
Nick McDonell grew up on New York City’s Upper East Side, a neighborhood defined by its wealth and influence. As a child, McDonell enjoyed everything that rarefied world entailed—sailing lessons in the Hamptons, school galas at the Met, and holiday trips on private jets. But as an adult, he left it behind to become a foreign correspondent in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In Quiet Street, McDonell returns to the sidewalks of his youth, exhuming with bracing honesty his upbringing and those of his affluent peers. From Galápagos Island cruises and Tanzanian safaris to steely handshakes and schoolyard microaggressions to fox-hunting rituals and the courtship rites of sexually precocious tweens, McDonell examines the rearing of the ruling class in scalpel-sharp detail, documenting how wealth and power are hoarded, encoded, and passed down from one generation to the next. What’s more, he demonstrates how outsiders—the poor, the nonwhite, the suburban—are kept out.
Searing and precise yet ultimately full of compassion, Quiet Street examines the problem of America’s one percent, whose vision of a more just world never materializes. Who are these people? How do they cling to power? What would it take for them to share it? Quiet Street looks for answers in a universal coming to terms with the culture that made you.
144 pages, Hardcover
Published August 22, 2023
47 people are currently reading
3432 people want to read
About the author
Nick McDonell
26 books163 followersNick McDonell is the author of the novels Twelve, The Third Brother, and An Expensive Education, as well as a book of political theory, The Civilization of Perpetual Movement, and four works of reportage, The End Of Major Combat Operations, Green On Blue, The Widow's Network, and The Bodies In Person.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 98 reviews
August 25, 2023
I don't know why I decided to read this but it definitely wasn't because I thought it was gonna be any good.
I came across the Nytimes review (which I later found out was less than stellar) of this tiny memoir about a one percenter who like most privileged white millennials had some self-reckoning during the pandemic. So, naturally, I decided to give it a shot.
I was intrigued by the review's first paragraph and decided to return to it after I was done. Thankfully, it's just 144 pages (that was the main draw and hey, at least Mr. McDonell has enough self-awareness not to torture us commoners -who actually paid good money to further enrich him- with more pages than is necessary).
So you may be wondering: what can we possibly learn about this one-percenter author in a little under 150 pages? Well, a few things, most of which I'm assuming are not what the author intended for us to take away from reading this well-crafted WASP-y book that reads like a self-indulging 100-page New Yorker article or a boring episode of Gossip Girl. I'll let you be the judge of that.
The first thing we learn is that Mr. McDonnell still felt compelled to tell his underwhelming story of finally realizing he was extremely privileged by accepting $1,495.73 per page from a publisher who was happy to dole it out to yet another White author with connections (his parents got his first novel published at 18 because they're both in the industry and extremely well-off.)
The next thing we find out is that nothing important ever happens and that everything we thought we knew about the extremely rich is, shocker, actually true.
It was thankfully shorter than Pineapple Street but just as shallow in its examination of the lives of wealthy New Yorkers, but less boring and topical than a good episode of Gossip Girl.
I came across the Nytimes review (which I later found out was less than stellar) of this tiny memoir about a one percenter who like most privileged white millennials had some self-reckoning during the pandemic. So, naturally, I decided to give it a shot.
I was intrigued by the review's first paragraph and decided to return to it after I was done. Thankfully, it's just 144 pages (that was the main draw and hey, at least Mr. McDonell has enough self-awareness not to torture us commoners -who actually paid good money to further enrich him- with more pages than is necessary).
So you may be wondering: what can we possibly learn about this one-percenter author in a little under 150 pages? Well, a few things, most of which I'm assuming are not what the author intended for us to take away from reading this well-crafted WASP-y book that reads like a self-indulging 100-page New Yorker article or a boring episode of Gossip Girl. I'll let you be the judge of that.
The first thing we learn is that Mr. McDonnell still felt compelled to tell his underwhelming story of finally realizing he was extremely privileged by accepting $1,495.73 per page from a publisher who was happy to dole it out to yet another White author with connections (his parents got his first novel published at 18 because they're both in the industry and extremely well-off.)
The next thing we find out is that nothing important ever happens and that everything we thought we knew about the extremely rich is, shocker, actually true.
It was thankfully shorter than Pineapple Street but just as shallow in its examination of the lives of wealthy New Yorkers, but less boring and topical than a good episode of Gossip Girl.
September 6, 2023
Hard to fathom how someone claiming to hail from the one percent can objectively attempt to explain how ignorant and why his peers are of the other 99 percent. McDonell is good at slicing and dicing what's behind the gaping divide but his treatise sticks out like a sore thumb apparent to any reader but him. On pretty much every page here, he cites personal examples, experiences and observations that dilute the very argument he's trying to make. He fesses up the publisher paid him six figures for this supposed insider manifesto but it reads mostly like an embarrassing self indulgent diatribe. You can't help but read this ill-conceived exploration of being rich and not wonder what the author and publisher hoped to achieve here but rub more salt into already infected social fabric wounds. McDonnell observes repeatedly how clueless so many of his ilk are as though he's immune or because he penned this very thin (literally and figuratively) book. With all of the talented writers out there who can't get a fair shot at having their work read let alone published, this represents an indictment of exactly the cluelessness of the elite that McDonnell bemoans and we already knew existed.
September 9, 2023
I was really sucked into this book because who doesn't want to know about the life of the richest NYC "elites", but ultimately the critique and introspection just wanted there. The stories of outrageous teens doing ridiculous is very entertaining, but to what end? What is the point here? Why write this book? Why pretend to do some sort of reimagining and then not offer any solutions or ideas or really dig in to what is at play. A let down for sure.
September 10, 2023
Meh. This book wasn't it. Honestly, if I want to delve into the privileged, one percent, I'll re-watch Gossip Girl and at least have some entertainment and laughs. I thought this book was going to give a bit more profound introspection or transformation, but it did not.
December 23, 2023
Shortly after graduating from Harvard, Nick McDonell spent a summer in Tanzania bird-watching with the author and co-founder of the Paris Review, Peter Matthiesen. As they looked out over the savanna, scouring the plains for an emerald-spotted dove, Peter Matthiesen confessed that he had no real regrets in life. He had renounced his life of privilege and put his inheritance toward environmental activism and he could feel content with the moral worth of his life. If he had any regret, it would be his involvement with the CIA and his years spying on communists, using the Paris Review as a front for espionage. In retrospect, he realizes that he liked the people he was spying on more than the people he was spying for. It's a zany story that distills the book. Like Peter Matthiesen Nick McDonell is both a beneficiary and a critic of privilege, an old Buckley boy, a Riverdale alum, a Harvard and Oxford graduate, he has sampled the greatest educational privileges of American aristocracy. He can count five nannies in his childhood. And yet, in this book, he wants to present himself as—much like Mikhail Bakunin or Friedrich Engels—a reluctant millionaire, an over-educated revolutionary with genuine sympathy for the poor, a zealous convert to communism (except, with a lucrative book contract). He wants to pretend that he is a spy giving an insider's angle on the most wealthy Americans.
So much of this is book is infuriating and ridiculous. I particularly like, because it is so outrageously galling, the moment when he mentions how he asked his parents if, instead of working as a busboy during his summer break in college, he could write a novel. They encouraged him, he wrote a story about upper-Manhattan elites, they put him in touch with a close friend and publisher, and months later he has a twenty-five-thousand-dollar advance and a speaking tour in Australia. Everything fortuitously falls into place for him. Of course, McDonell isn't ignorant of his enormous privilege, the social networks and connections in place to guarantee his success—and that's the craziest part of it all. He's not just a critic of privilege; he is a magician who can monetize his own privilege by disavowing it. He is a street conjurer who shows the audience his elite status and, for a brief moment, makes it disappear. Hold the applause. He's a con pick-pocketing the gullible.
And yet, I think McDonell is a very compelling writer. I like the preface in which he talks about his early volunteer work in a morgue at the start of the Covid pandemic. He tells it with such casual drollery (I loved the self-deprecating line, "I had been looking forward to treating the living but on quick reflection supposed the dead were more commensurate with my level of experience"). His book gives a clear-eyed and farcical insight into the bizarre worldview of elite America (in one case, he recalls a schoolmate who, indicted for homicide, wrote to the prosecutor to let him know that he was also a Buckley boy—as though their old-boy affiliation came higher than the justice system). In some cases, McDonell's tone turns anthropological. When he describes the upper-class custom of hiring nannies for children, he talks in a kind of ethnographic generality: "From birth, one of their most intimate relationships was transactional. The parents sometimes felt uneasy about this but believed they had no time for childcare, having to keep their prestigious jobs" (I feel like this could be voiced by David Attenborough).
So it's a mixed review. McDonell is a consummate writer who crafts a fantastical vision of elite Manhattan life but his quasi-Marxist apologia rings hollow. I also felt that the critique was still blinkered. His discussion of income inequality and racial disparities is all very rote and familiar. I wish that he had thought more about how wealthy elitism intersects with conservative ideas about gender and sexuality. The elite schools he describes pride themselves on their athletic dominance; the families that send their children to these schools are overwhelmingly straight; and, as the author notes in one chapter, these schools have historically harbored a misogynistic culture (as he mentions, the Harvard final clubs which have been repeatedly implicated in a pervasive rape culture). They might be socially liberal but they nurture a culture of toxic masculinity. I think there was so much more that McDonell could have explored.
So much of this is book is infuriating and ridiculous. I particularly like, because it is so outrageously galling, the moment when he mentions how he asked his parents if, instead of working as a busboy during his summer break in college, he could write a novel. They encouraged him, he wrote a story about upper-Manhattan elites, they put him in touch with a close friend and publisher, and months later he has a twenty-five-thousand-dollar advance and a speaking tour in Australia. Everything fortuitously falls into place for him. Of course, McDonell isn't ignorant of his enormous privilege, the social networks and connections in place to guarantee his success—and that's the craziest part of it all. He's not just a critic of privilege; he is a magician who can monetize his own privilege by disavowing it. He is a street conjurer who shows the audience his elite status and, for a brief moment, makes it disappear. Hold the applause. He's a con pick-pocketing the gullible.
And yet, I think McDonell is a very compelling writer. I like the preface in which he talks about his early volunteer work in a morgue at the start of the Covid pandemic. He tells it with such casual drollery (I loved the self-deprecating line, "I had been looking forward to treating the living but on quick reflection supposed the dead were more commensurate with my level of experience"). His book gives a clear-eyed and farcical insight into the bizarre worldview of elite America (in one case, he recalls a schoolmate who, indicted for homicide, wrote to the prosecutor to let him know that he was also a Buckley boy—as though their old-boy affiliation came higher than the justice system). In some cases, McDonell's tone turns anthropological. When he describes the upper-class custom of hiring nannies for children, he talks in a kind of ethnographic generality: "From birth, one of their most intimate relationships was transactional. The parents sometimes felt uneasy about this but believed they had no time for childcare, having to keep their prestigious jobs" (I feel like this could be voiced by David Attenborough).
So it's a mixed review. McDonell is a consummate writer who crafts a fantastical vision of elite Manhattan life but his quasi-Marxist apologia rings hollow. I also felt that the critique was still blinkered. His discussion of income inequality and racial disparities is all very rote and familiar. I wish that he had thought more about how wealthy elitism intersects with conservative ideas about gender and sexuality. The elite schools he describes pride themselves on their athletic dominance; the families that send their children to these schools are overwhelmingly straight; and, as the author notes in one chapter, these schools have historically harbored a misogynistic culture (as he mentions, the Harvard final clubs which have been repeatedly implicated in a pervasive rape culture). They might be socially liberal but they nurture a culture of toxic masculinity. I think there was so much more that McDonell could have explored.
March 4, 2023
Editor, I’m biased, but read this!
September 27, 2023
The title is clever (quiet street does not mean what I thought it would mean) but otherwise there is nothing new here about the 1%.
October 19, 2023
$175k for this?
October 10, 2023
I was expecting a book from the POV of the top 1%. Within the top 1% and .01%, I understand there are great differences, but I don’t think he can speak “on behalf” of the 1%. The author groups himself with the 1% even though the quiz he cited early on marked him in the top 4% of wealth (A $1.4 million net worth). A quick google search in 2023 shows that the top 1% of Americans have a minimum net worth of around $11.1 million. Not sure what quiz he took, but not a good start.
I understand that the author is dissecting his experience growing up in an affluent family in New York, but there are a lot of assumptions. He interviewed some of his peers on what they are afraid of in a post-Covid world. They shared that they feared war and political violence (which sounds valid in the current climate). The author reads into this to mean that they are afraid of loss of status and wealth. A better word would probably be loss of safety, but I don’t appreciate the way that he reads into these kinds of conversations. Asking direct questions instead of reading classism and privilege into every interview would make for more exciting journalism.
I feel that a lot of his examples of classism are quite a stretch. Examples: suggesting to be quiet in a dangerous neighborhood is an ‘act of violence’ ; he says that there is a “violence to good manners” and suggests that saying sir while shaking hands is a “unfair” advantage and power move over those who never learned how to shake hands (I mean, come on); driving vs using the subway in New York further creating “segregation”; using stories of immature boys to talk about privilege and class.
Nick McDonell suggests that he stole opportunities from others because of his race and wealth. In practice, that means that by having the “right” connections he was able to publish books and make a living as an author. He seems penitent over the fact that his community has elevated him, but are we not all “products of our class” as he said before?
He suggests leaning towards a “more humane” distribution of wealth. He says that the idea that anyone can make it and be successful in America is a nice idea perpetuated by the top 1% but in reality, the success stories are few and far between. This perspective is difficult to validate as I have had and seen completely different experiences as a child of immigrant parents. I wonder how he can hold this perspective so strongly when he himself is the child of immigrants and claims to be in the top 1%.
Perhaps a more realistic goal is a better distribution of opportunity instead of wealth? But then again, we all have 6 degrees of separation between us and anyone in the world.
Quotes I liked:
“ Or, perhaps a person can write about things when she was no longer the person who experience them. And that transition is not yet complete. The person who writes about her experience is not the same person who had the experience. The ability to write about it as proof of change. Of great distance. Not everyone is willing to admit this, but it is true. And the sense of conversion narrative is built into every autobiography. The writer purports to be the one who remembers, who saw, who did, who felt. The writer is no longer that person. And writing things down, she is reborn, and yet, still define by the action she talk, even if she distance herself. Rachel Kushner, the hard crowd, essays essays.”
“What is owed the 1% and ourselves?”
“We are all products of a class”
“It’s the peasants job to stay out of archives” - makes me think about how the wealthy devote resources to being remembered, documenting history, and themselves.
I understand that the author is dissecting his experience growing up in an affluent family in New York, but there are a lot of assumptions. He interviewed some of his peers on what they are afraid of in a post-Covid world. They shared that they feared war and political violence (which sounds valid in the current climate). The author reads into this to mean that they are afraid of loss of status and wealth. A better word would probably be loss of safety, but I don’t appreciate the way that he reads into these kinds of conversations. Asking direct questions instead of reading classism and privilege into every interview would make for more exciting journalism.
I feel that a lot of his examples of classism are quite a stretch. Examples: suggesting to be quiet in a dangerous neighborhood is an ‘act of violence’ ; he says that there is a “violence to good manners” and suggests that saying sir while shaking hands is a “unfair” advantage and power move over those who never learned how to shake hands (I mean, come on); driving vs using the subway in New York further creating “segregation”; using stories of immature boys to talk about privilege and class.
Nick McDonell suggests that he stole opportunities from others because of his race and wealth. In practice, that means that by having the “right” connections he was able to publish books and make a living as an author. He seems penitent over the fact that his community has elevated him, but are we not all “products of our class” as he said before?
He suggests leaning towards a “more humane” distribution of wealth. He says that the idea that anyone can make it and be successful in America is a nice idea perpetuated by the top 1% but in reality, the success stories are few and far between. This perspective is difficult to validate as I have had and seen completely different experiences as a child of immigrant parents. I wonder how he can hold this perspective so strongly when he himself is the child of immigrants and claims to be in the top 1%.
Perhaps a more realistic goal is a better distribution of opportunity instead of wealth? But then again, we all have 6 degrees of separation between us and anyone in the world.
Quotes I liked:
“ Or, perhaps a person can write about things when she was no longer the person who experience them. And that transition is not yet complete. The person who writes about her experience is not the same person who had the experience. The ability to write about it as proof of change. Of great distance. Not everyone is willing to admit this, but it is true. And the sense of conversion narrative is built into every autobiography. The writer purports to be the one who remembers, who saw, who did, who felt. The writer is no longer that person. And writing things down, she is reborn, and yet, still define by the action she talk, even if she distance herself. Rachel Kushner, the hard crowd, essays essays.”
“What is owed the 1% and ourselves?”
“We are all products of a class”
“It’s the peasants job to stay out of archives” - makes me think about how the wealthy devote resources to being remembered, documenting history, and themselves.
September 24, 2023
LOVED the idea. Only decent execution
June 30, 2023
Interesting. This book explores the 1% - the ultra-wealthy and gives an insider view of how they’re raised and educated as the author lives that life. I enjoyed reading about this enclave and the overwhelming resources afforded (literally) the kids in these families. It’s a life of which I have zero insight. The title “QUIET STREET” is from an experience at a prestigious school - found it fascinating and the author’s reflection and perspective interesting. There was a lack of written emotion in this book - it felt flat and almost robotic at times as well as if the author was keeping a distance between himself and his words. Interesting perspectives - especially in light of SCOTUS Affirmative Action gutting. Heartfelt thanks to Pantheon for the copy.
July 14, 2024
There's a critical passage in the preface of Quiet Street in which the author reflects on an earlier desire to write about his experiences working in a morgue during the pandemic:
So instead of writing about the morgue, he writes about the elite social circles (the "bubble"/"fortress") he has been part of his whole life.
In that passage lies the central theme, and central flaw, of the book: the primary privilege of the elite is their sense of entitlement to access and involvement everywhere. McDonnell has been writing books and articles about communities he is not a part of most of his life, and only recently has he begun to question the appropriateness of that kind of relationship. He asks, "Was I then a tourist—or worse, a kind of profiteer?"
From here McDonnell embarks on an extended essay exploring the reasons it would take him so long to see this form of entitlement, and, in doing so, shifts his role from professional outsider to professional insider.
"There is a violence to good manners," he says at one point: the best line of the book. Yes, it is these "good manners" that allow the elite to convince themselves that they have earned their access, their warm and friendly reception, their invitation. It is these manners that hide the power imbalance and the threat of violence (or deprivation) that would accompany any failure to provide that warm welcome, that friendly deference. But it's also these manners that do earn them generally positive regard on many occasions.
Based on the reviews here, I don't think McDonnell quite succeeds at conveying the nuance he intends. The elite bubble/fortress is the source of an insidious obliviousness to the realities of the non-elite world, but it also creates the conditions for an unusually pro-social easy trust in others and the world. Elites often have a just-world approach to everyone, which can make them exceptionally charismatic and generous in their direct relationships.
When you grow up outside of elite circles, and then get access into those circles, one of the biggest shocks is how much you like these people—even if you, like me, have a bit of a misanthrope streak in you. Face to face, they are pleasant, fun, and big-hearted. You want to believe that they're all sneering, judgmental snobs (and don't get me wrong, there are those too), but you meet some who seem like some of the best people you've ever met, truly kind and attentive to everyone they meet, including you, and then you begin to think, maybe I'm the judgmental one! Here I have all these assumptions about them and how they'll treat me and people I know, and turns out I was wrong.
And you grow to really care for a couple of elite people, or maybe a whole bunch, and they talk to you about how much their work eats at their soul because they think they might actually be making the world worse off, they're complicit, etc. And you think, how awful for them! But then years go by, and they keep at it, and they continue to live lavishly, and they keep doing that job, or they replace it with something less overtly terrible, but still insulated from reality... And you go, wait a minute! But you also can't help but love these people, just like you can't help but love your drug-addicted cousin who steals from you or your best friend from elementary school who cheated on her husband. Except the scale of the damage is so much bigger.
The problem I think he has with making his point is that the access only runs one way. While McDonnell and his peers have limited relationships with the non-elite, they inevitably have many relationships with non-elites, sometimes even loving relationships, like with their care-givers. Non-elites, on the other hand, very rarely have access to any direct relationship with someone in the 1%. Elites read about a morgue or a battlefield or slum or public school, and imagine themselves in that world easily, because they could have access if they wanted it. Non-elites read about the elite world, and they—quite rightly—imagine themselves on the outside, excluded.
And so, non-elites do what we all do when we feel excluded: we put up our defenses, and we shut out what has shut us out.
I'm not sure it's possible to provide an insider's view of a truly exclusive place to a true outsider. You need a mediator, an outsider given provisional access (like Nick Carraway), or you need an exile, an outsider who was once an insider. An insider's perspective will always be dismissed.
Nick McDonnell, having realized he is not the best vehicle for non-elite storytelling, will likely realize in the face of the cold reception to this book that he is also a poor vehicle for elite storytelling, unless he resigns himself to writing about elites for elites. And so, I predict, he will go back to telling other people's stories and being rewarded for it. He will go back to being a professional outsider, and nothing at all will change.
But that, after all, was the conclusion of the book.
"Then we carried on talking."
When I volunteered, I thought I might collect such incidents and turn them into a book about life in that hospital, a kind of practitioner's memoir. But in my fourth shift, it seemed to me that, to do so properly, I would have to work there for years—to become, however much I could, a member of the community, which was majority Black and Latinx and not wealthy—and I was not prepared to do so. Moreover, I wondered whether, even if I did stay for years, I could write about this community well or usefully, being as I was of a different race and class, an outsider.
I was, in a sense, a professional outsider.
So instead of writing about the morgue, he writes about the elite social circles (the "bubble"/"fortress") he has been part of his whole life.
In that passage lies the central theme, and central flaw, of the book: the primary privilege of the elite is their sense of entitlement to access and involvement everywhere. McDonnell has been writing books and articles about communities he is not a part of most of his life, and only recently has he begun to question the appropriateness of that kind of relationship. He asks, "Was I then a tourist—or worse, a kind of profiteer?"
From here McDonnell embarks on an extended essay exploring the reasons it would take him so long to see this form of entitlement, and, in doing so, shifts his role from professional outsider to professional insider.
"There is a violence to good manners," he says at one point: the best line of the book. Yes, it is these "good manners" that allow the elite to convince themselves that they have earned their access, their warm and friendly reception, their invitation. It is these manners that hide the power imbalance and the threat of violence (or deprivation) that would accompany any failure to provide that warm welcome, that friendly deference. But it's also these manners that do earn them generally positive regard on many occasions.
Based on the reviews here, I don't think McDonnell quite succeeds at conveying the nuance he intends. The elite bubble/fortress is the source of an insidious obliviousness to the realities of the non-elite world, but it also creates the conditions for an unusually pro-social easy trust in others and the world. Elites often have a just-world approach to everyone, which can make them exceptionally charismatic and generous in their direct relationships.
When you grow up outside of elite circles, and then get access into those circles, one of the biggest shocks is how much you like these people—even if you, like me, have a bit of a misanthrope streak in you. Face to face, they are pleasant, fun, and big-hearted. You want to believe that they're all sneering, judgmental snobs (and don't get me wrong, there are those too), but you meet some who seem like some of the best people you've ever met, truly kind and attentive to everyone they meet, including you, and then you begin to think, maybe I'm the judgmental one! Here I have all these assumptions about them and how they'll treat me and people I know, and turns out I was wrong.
And you grow to really care for a couple of elite people, or maybe a whole bunch, and they talk to you about how much their work eats at their soul because they think they might actually be making the world worse off, they're complicit, etc. And you think, how awful for them! But then years go by, and they keep at it, and they continue to live lavishly, and they keep doing that job, or they replace it with something less overtly terrible, but still insulated from reality... And you go, wait a minute! But you also can't help but love these people, just like you can't help but love your drug-addicted cousin who steals from you or your best friend from elementary school who cheated on her husband. Except the scale of the damage is so much bigger.
The problem I think he has with making his point is that the access only runs one way. While McDonnell and his peers have limited relationships with the non-elite, they inevitably have many relationships with non-elites, sometimes even loving relationships, like with their care-givers. Non-elites, on the other hand, very rarely have access to any direct relationship with someone in the 1%. Elites read about a morgue or a battlefield or slum or public school, and imagine themselves in that world easily, because they could have access if they wanted it. Non-elites read about the elite world, and they—quite rightly—imagine themselves on the outside, excluded.
And so, non-elites do what we all do when we feel excluded: we put up our defenses, and we shut out what has shut us out.
I'm not sure it's possible to provide an insider's view of a truly exclusive place to a true outsider. You need a mediator, an outsider given provisional access (like Nick Carraway), or you need an exile, an outsider who was once an insider. An insider's perspective will always be dismissed.
Nick McDonnell, having realized he is not the best vehicle for non-elite storytelling, will likely realize in the face of the cold reception to this book that he is also a poor vehicle for elite storytelling, unless he resigns himself to writing about elites for elites. And so, I predict, he will go back to telling other people's stories and being rewarded for it. He will go back to being a professional outsider, and nothing at all will change.
But that, after all, was the conclusion of the book.
"Then we carried on talking."
September 1, 2023
3.75 stars rounded up.
Thank you for the ARC I received from Knopf Books through a giveaway on goodreads.
While I don’t know what I expected, I’m not sure this is it. I appreciated the approach to telling the stories of the author and his friends/classmates growing up, but in many ways it felt really sympathetic. Yes, it was pretty direct in calling out the nepotism and cyclical power dynamic of the 1%, but we also got a lot of explanation and shoulder shrugging. What if YOU as an insider, author, were to be more confrontational? Yes, you needed to play nicely to have the conversation but I feel like a more direct and possibly abrasive hand might actually get a point across to your 1% colleagues. As a non-member of this group, this simply made me more angry at them as a whole, which I previously did not think was possible.
All that to say, this author is a good writer. I like his voice and how equitably it seemed he tried to approach this topic. My distance from and predisposition to anger at this community is not the author’s fault, but given the proximity he has to them and privilege he has, I would like to see a more “calling out” than “inviting in” analysis of the situation.
Thank you for the ARC I received from Knopf Books through a giveaway on goodreads.
While I don’t know what I expected, I’m not sure this is it. I appreciated the approach to telling the stories of the author and his friends/classmates growing up, but in many ways it felt really sympathetic. Yes, it was pretty direct in calling out the nepotism and cyclical power dynamic of the 1%, but we also got a lot of explanation and shoulder shrugging. What if YOU as an insider, author, were to be more confrontational? Yes, you needed to play nicely to have the conversation but I feel like a more direct and possibly abrasive hand might actually get a point across to your 1% colleagues. As a non-member of this group, this simply made me more angry at them as a whole, which I previously did not think was possible.
All that to say, this author is a good writer. I like his voice and how equitably it seemed he tried to approach this topic. My distance from and predisposition to anger at this community is not the author’s fault, but given the proximity he has to them and privilege he has, I would like to see a more “calling out” than “inviting in” analysis of the situation.
September 12, 2024
Ultimately a disappointing book. The author grew up in the Upper East Side and went to the best schools. A subsequent turn to journalism has now made him feel guilty about all of the advantages he had. The book starts well with a discussion of his prep school years but quickly loses steam. He struggles to add content - one chapter is just unsourced statements from his classmates - and the book is less than 150 pages. I think he didn't deliver on what he promised to write, because the description of the book doesn't really match what is there. I suspect his privilege enabled him to keep his advance.
I grudgingly gave it a second star because it was short. I doubt I would have picked up the book from the library had been longer.
I grudgingly gave it a second star because it was short. I doubt I would have picked up the book from the library had been longer.
April 14, 2024
2.5
There are real attempts at introspection of the class system the author was and is a part of however he never fully goes deeper than surface level and the book has only slight instances of attempted nuance.
There are real attempts at introspection of the class system the author was and is a part of however he never fully goes deeper than surface level and the book has only slight instances of attempted nuance.
December 26, 2025
It was just okay. Gave it two stars solely cause I liked the writing, the rest of it was Just a Rich Guy Talking About Being a Rich Guy. Memoirs are not my fave, I also I read an uncorrected proof so it most likely differed from the official publishing, but I can’t imagine much would have changed.
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May 28, 2025"All the world was ours not because of what we excluded or inherited but because of our open-minded good manners and how hard we worked—which, all agreed, was very hard indeed. This superficial meritocracy masked, especially to ourselves, a profound entitlement.”
It's an interesting premise, but I found it to be a somewhat lackluster execution.
It's an interesting premise, but I found it to be a somewhat lackluster execution.
August 15, 2023
So I went into this with absolutely zero expectations (I didn't even realize this was nonfiction, haha) but found this to be a really quick, insightful and enjoyable read. I binged the whole thing in a day and really enjoyed my time with it.
I think we're all fascinated by the 1%. It's why celebrity gossip magazines exist. We, the regular people, are fascinated by how the other half lives. And this was just a little window into that world from someone who has lived it. And someone who has also come out on the other side knowing, from the sound of it, how to be a grounded, not completely entitled human.
This little portrait of the wealthy was a fascinating character study and had a lot to say about who they are, what drives them and, ultimately, how their way of life is wrong. And the kind of "monsters" it can create. Which I think we all know but seeing it from this pov was truly fascinating.
Overall, this is an excellent little think piece that I'm really glad to have read. It's very clean and concise and definitely takes a very journalistic approach to the topic. If you're also interested in this type of nonfiction, I could not recommend this more highly!!
And thank you so much to Pantheon for sending a copy of this my way in exchange for an honest review!
I think we're all fascinated by the 1%. It's why celebrity gossip magazines exist. We, the regular people, are fascinated by how the other half lives. And this was just a little window into that world from someone who has lived it. And someone who has also come out on the other side knowing, from the sound of it, how to be a grounded, not completely entitled human.
This little portrait of the wealthy was a fascinating character study and had a lot to say about who they are, what drives them and, ultimately, how their way of life is wrong. And the kind of "monsters" it can create. Which I think we all know but seeing it from this pov was truly fascinating.
Overall, this is an excellent little think piece that I'm really glad to have read. It's very clean and concise and definitely takes a very journalistic approach to the topic. If you're also interested in this type of nonfiction, I could not recommend this more highly!!
And thank you so much to Pantheon for sending a copy of this my way in exchange for an honest review!
May 11, 2025
It’s what he said it was. A small empire of brief moments being a 1%. I appreciate the self awareness and hope he gains his soul and loses the world.
February 8, 2024
controversial for sure. eerily relatable. also just super well written, never heard of this guy but writing style was tasteful. short to the point where it left me hanging but in an intrigued way.
January 28, 2024
While I appreciate the author’s good intentions in revealing his privileged upbringing as a one-percenter, I’m not sure it helped anyone but himself, assuaging his guilty conscience. It’s a testament to his privilege that he managed to get this milquetoast published — he didn’t probe particularly deeply or reveal anything that hasn’t been written about the subject of the ultra-rich already. This could have been a short essay in the New Yorker.
January 27, 2024
A fine examination of the privileges of the 1% by a member of the 1%.
January 21, 2024
So, I’m safely in the 1% and I went to one of these schools, politically more appetizing than Buckley (but basically the same). I currently escaped some aspects of the Fortress and yet I still live in this zone of “but we have to do the best for our kids”. I regularly struggle with these variables and I think there a lot of nuance in this book that the reviews are glossing over… some stories have to be told from many angles to be understood. Anyway, I’m pretty sure this guy knew he was going to be pilloried for it and did it anyway and that’s courageous.
December 15, 2023
This guy is a fraud. He has used his odious background to get ahead and now cries foul at the irresponsibility of the privileged in the US at age 39? What took him so long? Contrary to the jacket blurb, I read no compassion whatsoever, just opportunism to use class distinctions as a meal ticket. He quotes Piketty and yet I really doubt he ever read him. I don't think there are articles about Piketty in Town and Country.
August 26, 2023
A very quick and revealing read about life in the 1%. An honest and compassionate account that reads less like the cultural criticism of inequity I was expecting and more like a memoir. Interesting if abhorrent at times.
April 30, 2023
Interesting. Could have gone a bit deeper.
January 18, 2024
The flap describes this as a "bold and deeply personal exploration of wealth, power, and the American elite," but I wouldn't describe it as bold. It is, however, frank. And written with as much honest appraisal and remove as a beneficiary of the system can be expected to manage. I found it generous, in that sense, and hard to get through not because it wasn't well-written (it was) but because it's a confirmation of how the systems of privilege self-replicate, and how, culturally, those less-privileged are taught to revere and aspire to win within structures that, genuinely, have no space for anyone not already in/connected to these circles. It's not enjoyable to read page after page confirming that sort of thing.
Many of the negative reviews suggest that the book "offers no answers," other negative reviews note both that the author admits to his own privilege and to having a very real desire for more means/money/etc. These pieces are connected. I disagree that McDonnell 'doesn't offer answers' because, in the admissions about his privilege and naming the part that craves more he is subtly tipping his hand: "I am part of this, I can speak to this, and I have real parts of myself that understand how my privilege is permitted to continue and other parts that want to take full advantage even while I know what it does, even while I write these words. And I am aware of it. I can say this here to myself and to the reader. Imagine, then, the less self-aware, the ones who think their privilege is borne of merit. Because there are more of those."
Here McDonnell offers answers for the predicament. And they are unsurprising, and they are difficult — it requires questioning meritocracy, and a number of other soporific fairytales about self-determinism.
The point of this 'ethnography of the very-comfortable' seems to be that extremely few people have enough self-awareness to see the ways in which they are part of the problem — let alone among the fewER who've never have any real need to develop it. What happens to a person when so much is already taken care of before it can occur to them to ask? From the micro to the macro, the most pernicious elements of power replicate themself with unerring ease in the comforts people are unwilling, even unable, to see, let alone know how to give up.
Anyway, well done. Hard to read. Hard to, entirely, know if the author is a reliable narrator or just exorcising his own guilt about the awareness of the limited power of any ONE person to genuinely shift people away from maximizing comfort and TOWARD maximizing dignity and fairness, but I'm glad I read it.
Many of the negative reviews suggest that the book "offers no answers," other negative reviews note both that the author admits to his own privilege and to having a very real desire for more means/money/etc. These pieces are connected. I disagree that McDonnell 'doesn't offer answers' because, in the admissions about his privilege and naming the part that craves more he is subtly tipping his hand: "I am part of this, I can speak to this, and I have real parts of myself that understand how my privilege is permitted to continue and other parts that want to take full advantage even while I know what it does, even while I write these words. And I am aware of it. I can say this here to myself and to the reader. Imagine, then, the less self-aware, the ones who think their privilege is borne of merit. Because there are more of those."
Here McDonnell offers answers for the predicament. And they are unsurprising, and they are difficult — it requires questioning meritocracy, and a number of other soporific fairytales about self-determinism.
The point of this 'ethnography of the very-comfortable' seems to be that extremely few people have enough self-awareness to see the ways in which they are part of the problem — let alone among the fewER who've never have any real need to develop it. What happens to a person when so much is already taken care of before it can occur to them to ask? From the micro to the macro, the most pernicious elements of power replicate themself with unerring ease in the comforts people are unwilling, even unable, to see, let alone know how to give up.
Anyway, well done. Hard to read. Hard to, entirely, know if the author is a reliable narrator or just exorcising his own guilt about the awareness of the limited power of any ONE person to genuinely shift people away from maximizing comfort and TOWARD maximizing dignity and fairness, but I'm glad I read it.
August 6, 2023
Nick grew up on New York City’s Upper East Side, a neighborhood defined by wealth and influence. As a child, he was given everything he ever wanted and every opportunity. From school galas at the Met, to holiday trips on private jets. But as an adult, he left it all behind to become a foreign correspondent in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In this book, Nick returns to the sidewalks of his youth. He examines everything from Galapagos Island cruises and Tanzanian safaris to schoolyard microaggressions. He looks at the ruling class in sharp detail, and how wealth and power are hoarded, and passed down from one generation to the next.
This was an interesting read into the lives of the ultra-wealthy. While I really enjoyed the insider’s view of this life, I felt that something was missing. It was almost that while this book was about the author, he detached himself from it all together. I think I would have enjoyed it more had I gotten more emotion from the pages. I did enjoy the book and it was interesting to see a lot of things that get called out in movies about the wealthy, actually does happen. I wish my parents would have given me generational wealth instead of generational trauma, but alas I will have to settle reading about their privileged lives.
If you are looking for an interesting glimpse into the lives of the ultra-wealthy, then I recommend you pick up this read. It’s a quick one and worth it.
Thank you so much to the publisher, Pantheon @pantheonbooks for sending me this one! All opinions are my own.
In this book, Nick returns to the sidewalks of his youth. He examines everything from Galapagos Island cruises and Tanzanian safaris to schoolyard microaggressions. He looks at the ruling class in sharp detail, and how wealth and power are hoarded, and passed down from one generation to the next.
This was an interesting read into the lives of the ultra-wealthy. While I really enjoyed the insider’s view of this life, I felt that something was missing. It was almost that while this book was about the author, he detached himself from it all together. I think I would have enjoyed it more had I gotten more emotion from the pages. I did enjoy the book and it was interesting to see a lot of things that get called out in movies about the wealthy, actually does happen. I wish my parents would have given me generational wealth instead of generational trauma, but alas I will have to settle reading about their privileged lives.
If you are looking for an interesting glimpse into the lives of the ultra-wealthy, then I recommend you pick up this read. It’s a quick one and worth it.
Thank you so much to the publisher, Pantheon @pantheonbooks for sending me this one! All opinions are my own.
October 2, 2023
Those of us who are lucky enough to have attended elite schools get a big leg up in life. And most of us who attended these schools are white and come from families that range from well off to immensely wealthy, so there is a double boost. In my generation, most of us were also male. Even those who are not wealthy, hang out with wealthy kids so attitudes and social connections rub off. Mr. McDonell makes the case that these schools create a pervasive atmosphere of privilege, even when they are trying to teach their students positive and inclusive values and to encourage them to be of service in the broader world. No matter what these schools may outwardly say, they create a self-reinforcing culture where everybody goes into finance, makes millions, marries within the clan of rich people and perpetuates the culture of privilege. Some of these schools now make an effort to admit more students from poorer backgrounds. This is important, and I applaud it, but I don't think that will be enough by itself to break the cycle. Part of the problem is that a lot of the people who live in the world of privilege work hard and mean well, so they think that they earned their privilege and are unwilling to sacrifice any of it. They don't want their lifestyles impaired, and they want the same privilege for their children. Mr. McDonnell doesn't offer much in the way of solutions. I would have liked the book better if he had.
February 24, 2024
If you internalize self-hatred, there is nothing that can save you. Wallowing in loathing, while in your "bubble of privilege" seems the height of pathetic inaction. But far be if from me to interfere with your self flagellation. But I would offer up this one specific qualm about the (unreliable?) narration: the author states that he wrote a book and more than 100K copies were purchased - so unlike multi-million dollar advances given to grasping politicians or faded stars - these were sold. Individuals purchased the creation. So were only the privileged allowed to purchase? Were they forced to purchase? If having money bothers you so much give it up.
Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, then go and sell all that you own. Give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in heaven. Then come and follow me!”
22 But when the young man heard Jesus tell him to give away his money, he was sad. He didn’t want to do this, because he was very rich. So he left.
23 Then Jesus said to his followers, “The truth is, it will be very hard for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom. 24 Yes, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom.”
So stop your whining. If you think it is somehow blood money - give it up. Until then your whining seems more like performance art - and not particularly effective or interesting.
Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, then go and sell all that you own. Give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in heaven. Then come and follow me!”
22 But when the young man heard Jesus tell him to give away his money, he was sad. He didn’t want to do this, because he was very rich. So he left.
23 Then Jesus said to his followers, “The truth is, it will be very hard for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom. 24 Yes, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom.”
So stop your whining. If you think it is somehow blood money - give it up. Until then your whining seems more like performance art - and not particularly effective or interesting.
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