Ruling America

Ruling America offers a panoramic history of our country's ruling elites from the time of the American Revolution to the present. At its heart is the greatest of American paradoxes: How have tiny minorities of the rich and privileged consistently exercised so much power in a nation built on the notion of rule by the people?

In a series of thought-provoking essays, leading scholars of American history examine every epoch in which ruling economic elites have shaped our national experience. They explore how elites came into existence, how they established their dominance over public affairs, and how their rule came to an end. The contributors analyze the elite coalition that led the Revolution and then examine the antebellum planters of the South and the merchant patricians of the North. Later chapters vividly portray the Gilded Age "robber barons," the great finance capitalists in the age of J. P. Morgan, and the foreign-policy "Establishment" of the post-World War II years. The book concludes with a dissection of the corporate-led counter-revolution against the New Deal characteristic of the Reagan and Bush era.

Rarely in the last half-century has one book afforded such a comprehensive look at the ways elite wealth and power have influenced the American experiment with democracy. At a time when the distribution of wealth and power has never been more unequal, Ruling America is of urgent contemporary relevance.

Ruling America offers a panoramic history of our country's ruling elites from the time of the American Revolution to the present. At its heart is the greatest of American paradoxes: How have tiny minorities of the rich and privileged consistently exercised so much power in a nation built on the notion of rule by the people?

In a series of thought-provoking essays, leading scholars of American history examine every epoch in which ruling economic elites have shaped our national experience. They explore how elites came into existence, how they established their dominance over public affairs, and how their rule came to an end. The contributors analyze the elite coalition that led the Revolution and then examine the antebellum planters of the South and the merchant patricians of the North. Later chapters vividly portray the Gilded Age "robber barons," the great finance capitalists in the age of J. P. Morgan, and the foreign-policy "Establishment" of the post-World War II years. The book concludes with a dissection of the corporate-led counter-revolution against the New Deal characteristic of the Reagan and Bush era.

Rarely in the last half-century has one book afforded such a comprehensive look at the ways elite wealth and power have influenced the American experiment with democracy. At a time when the distribution of wealth and power has never been more unequal, Ruling America is of urgent contemporary relevance.

Publishers Weekly

Even in a nation founded on the principles of freedom and equality, small, motivated groups wield inordinate amounts of power. The notion itself is straightforward, but the 11 historians contributing to this volume examine it rigorously, documenting the dominance of American ruling classes like the antebellum South s slave power, the North s Merchants and Manufacturers, the nouveau riche industrialists of the Gilded Age and the Cold War s Foreign Policy Establishment. Each essay chronicles the myriad factors that led to the consolidation of power by one such set of aristocrats, and then explains the internal divisions and external changes that led to their downfall and empowered their successors. For example, a small clique of graduates from top New England boarding schools and universities coalesced into the Establishment, dominating foreign policy with their worldview until Vietnam raised questions that the foreign policy Establishment was not successfully able to answer. The most recent manifestation of this elite baton-passing, according to a convincing entry by Michael Lind, resulted in the southernization of American society under which the country morphed into a low-wage society with weak parties, weak unions and a political culture based on demagogic appeals to racial and ethnic anxieties, religious conservatism, and militaristic patriotism. The volume captures the essence of varied eras and their elites, but at times the narrative suffers from dry academic prose and a shortage of illustrative anecdotes. Curiously, the editors conclude that despite 200 years of cyclical history, no current challenge is arising to overthrow the currently prevailing counterrevolution against the New Deal. In fact, in suggesting that the democratic urge to rein in the dangerous ambitions of privileged elites has gone frail, they undermine the key lesson of the compilation itself. (Apr.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Steve Fraser is a writer and historian living in New York.

Gary Gerstle is Professor of History, University of Maryland.