Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich

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Product Description
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

RICH-I-STAN n. 1. a new country located in the heart of America, populated entirely by millionaires, most of whom acquired their wealth during the new Gilded Age of the past twenty years. 2. a country with a population larger than Belgium and Denmark; typical citizens include “spud king” J. R. Simplot; hair stylist Sydell Miller, the new star of Palm Beach; and assorted oddball entrepreneurs. 3. A country that with a little luck and pluck, you, too, could be a citizen of.

The rich have always been different from you and me, but Robert Frank’s revealing and funny journey through “Richistan” entertainingly shows that they are truly another breed.

Customer Reviews: Read 63 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Funny, interesting, educational, effortless June 9, 2007
78 out of 79 found this review helpful

Robert Frank is a reporter at the Wall Street Journal who, a number of years ago, began a column on what it's like to be rich in America. This soon became a very popular and he was tasked to work on it full time. This book represents the synthesis of his experiences over the past few years.

"Richistan" is a colloquial term Frank uses to describe the booming numbers of wealthy. Starting in the late 1980s, there has been a doubling or tripling of the number of wealthy households in the US, currently at over 9 million with $1 million or more in net assets. Within this "nation within a nation" there is a class system, with the "lower class" rich (or "merely affluent") in the 1-10 million net worth range, the "middle class" rich in the 10-100 range and the "upper class" rich in the 100-1 billion range. The billionaires, estimated to be about 1000 strong in the US, are in a separate group entirely. Each of these groups have distinct spending patterns and investment goals. 90% of these new rich came from middle or lower class backgrounds and everything about them is different from the stereotypes of the "old" rich: how they made their money, how they spend it, how they give it away.

Frank's book is both easy reading and hard to put down. I listened to the audiobook version, going through the 7 hours in "no time". Although educational, this is also a very funny book. The audio greatly enhances the humor as the narrator has perfect timing and change of voice, many times I was laughing out loud, yet at the same time going "ah-ha!". A rare treat.

5 out of 5 stars

I Live in Richistan June 26, 2007
62 out of 65 found this review helpful

Greenwich, Connecticut, a town featured in Robert Frank's great new book, "Richistan", is my hometown and a place where I have spent my entire life. As the author points out, Greenwich used to be known as a place of old money but the new money that has flown into town over the past decade or so makes it a spot of even more enormous wealth, capturing all levels of the super-rich as Frank describes. As in many cities in America the new money is most evident in the McMansions that have sprung up. (as some people call it, "Vulgaria") I wonder if every new McMansion has to have Greek-like columns.

Frank does a comprehensive job in explaining how the rich live, but it is of note that so many Richistanis, when asked if they have enough money, say "no". If you have $20 million you think you need $40 million. He offers another excellent chapter on how many of the rich aren't any happier with all their money, with many of them being more miserable. But his best point is that the super-rich have created a class unto themselves, and towns like Greenwich, which has a sustainable middle class, will itself, in the future, become even more separated between rich and poor. It's a sobering look. I highly recommend "Richistan".... it's a terrific expose and an eye-opener as well.

5 out of 5 stars

Your Jaw Will Drop... June 7, 2007
57 out of 61 found this review helpful

The "new rich" have been around for a few years now, but beyond the nonsense to be seen or read about in the tabloid realm, we've never had the opportunity to take a look at what the lives of these people are really like - until now.

The people of Richistan did not inherit their wealth, it was earned, sometimes quite quickly, for others it was a steady rise to billionaire status. What this book gives its readers are sharp and humorous obervations on how they made their money and how it has changed their lives, for better and/or worse. For instance, read why it now takes five people to kill a renegade mouse in a big house instead of one...

Similarly, the author then takes a look at the different industries and jobs that so much money in the U.S. has spawned. For example, the founder of the Starkey Institute for Household Management (aka: Butler School) wouldn't be where she is today if it weren't for the labor shortage of 20th century butlers. Then there's the need for private chefs, an army of nannies, housekeepers, pilots and executive assistants.

And where does a mega-billionaire go on vacation? How does he find a spot that will guarantee his total security and privacy? Richistan will tell you about the man who answered these questions and built a quasi "time share" business for islands instead of condos...plus you'll read about the billionaires who go there and how they spend their vacations.

It really is addictive stuff and a great beach book for the Summer. For self-confessed business junkies who enjoy reading about mega-successful business people, and how they got to where they are - this is a must-read, because you get all of that and so much more.

2 out of 5 stars

Tell me tell me, how to be, a Billi-onai-ai-ai-aire! August 15, 2007
29 out of 34 found this review helpful

The Rich, F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, are different from us. Fitzgerald was right: they *are* different from us.

They own 500-foot yachts, for one thing.

For another, they own watches that are more expensive than a Rolls Royce. They hire "household managers", uber-butlers who double as managerial major domos, to run their vast, sprawling estates, and when they buzz their Household Manager to have Jeevesy 'bring the car around', they're probably talking about their 1.1 million dollar Bugatti Veyron or 750K McClaren Mercedes supercar---or if they're in a downscale mood, maybe it'll just be the Maybach.

You know, to slum around in.

As Bob Dylan (himself, by now, no doubt a 'Richistani') once sang "The Times they are a-Changing"---though not the way Dylan and his hippy brethren might have imagined. We find ourselves in an era of ostentatious wealth, in a time when the Forbes 400 is made up solely of billionaires, in a time when the rich are getting richer---much richer, fabulously richer!---and the rest of us? Well, forget about it.

That's the ostensible subject of Robert Frank's book "Richistan", which, on the whole, is a light, airy, engaging little fluff-piece that takes the reader from one enclave of Richies to another: from a Palm Beach Red Cross fundraiser to Butler Boot Camp in Colorado, from a man who made his fortune building teensy little ceramic villages to the grinding account of a tech billionaire who lost his entire fortune during the Dot Com bust, from billionaire philanthropy to what Frank calls a 'new Rich man's politics'.

Frank, in his introduction, bills his little survey of the uber-wealthy as a work of anthropology: get in, take lots of pictures, ask a lot of questions, boogie out, research report in hand. Now, granted, Anthropology takes a lot of different forms, but Robert Frank certainly proves one thing: if you're going to do an anthropological study of a strange & insular tribe, it's a lot more fun hunkering down in the clubhouse over Johnny Walker Black or at the Polo track canvassing your subject as opposed to sweating it on the veldt studying a bunch of spear wielding massai.

Rather than venture deep into the ominous, inky blackness of the deep jungle, though, Frank confines himself to the coastline: this is a book of shallow little fly-bys at the rich, rather than the more adventurous safaris into the interior.

You'll learn how one rich guy runs his charitable giving in what Frank bills as an 'exciting new philanthropy' (uh, he uses---a spreadsheet! and he, um,---sets benchmarks!), and you'll learn how a bunch of Colorado rich people carried out a political coup (they, um---spent lots of money! and, uh,---used the Internet!).

But that's pretty much it. There's nothing here that you don't already know: chances are you know the astronomical rate at which the U.S. has been minting millionaires, or that a cool million isn't that cool anymore because it doesn't mean what it used to, or that the Rich are driving a boom in luxury goods---including little toy rich dogs like chows, uber-luxury whips like Bentley & Rolls-Royce, the advent of million dollar supercars getting totaled minutes after being purchased, and of course the crazy yacht phenomenon, with yachts getting bigger & more opulent than ever.

You know all that, right?

Well, maybe you don't. And if you don't, then "Richistan" will be a nice, amusing little read: an airplane read, a read you absorb quickly (it took me about 45 minutes) on the planeride from Portland to Topeka. It's sorta like a pamphlet.

Or, for that matter, a Wall Street Journal sidebar. That's not a surprise, because that's what Robert Frank is: the wealth reporter for the WSJ. The writing here is not unlike what you'd find there; it's breezy, somewhat bland, not particularly contentious, and about as shallow as the deep end of the kiddy pool at the Las Vegas Ritz.

If that's all you're up for, then "Richistan" should be just fine. But if you're looking for something deeper---something more akin to, say, David Brook's classic "Bobos in Paradise" (not a book I always agreed with, but one that was both rigorously researched, socially edgy & brilliantly written) then you'll find "Richistan" keenly disappointing, poorly edited, & fairly stupid.

Case in point: by the end, you'll be ready to gouge your eyes out with chopsticks if you have to read the word "Richistani" one more time.

But that said, "Richistan" just isn't all that. With its super-wide margins, ultra-big font, and news-of-the-week format, it's more stocking-stuffer fluff than anything more serious or substantial.

JSG

2 out of 5 stars

If this is Richistan then I don't want to go there August 1, 2007
24 out of 35 found this review helpful

I'll go out on a limb and provide a contrarian perspective compared with most other reviewers.

About eighty years ago F. Scott Fitzgerald told Ernest Hemingway - who later became a mid-20th Century Richistani and committed suicide at age 61, driven, at least in part, by paranoia that the IRS would take away his money - that "The rich are different from you and me," to which Hemingway responded, "Yes. They have more money."

This book's underlying premise is that the rich are different from the rest of us, and the author will tell us all about it. And by the end of Richistan's 250 narrow pages of widely spaced text (excluding notes and index) I'd learned that lots of wealthy people are driven workaholics who frequently get divorced, often have spoiled children and seem more obsessed with keeping up with the (even richer) Jones' consumption for the sake of consumption rather than truly enjoying or appreciating the things money can buy, but they still don't have enough money to feel secure much less enough time to do every thing they'd like. In other words they're pretty much like everyone else except they fly in private jets and live in fear of losing a lot of their money in the next hedge fund collapse.

Richistan - the book - is long on anecdotes and generalizations and short on useful information and positive role models. Are rich people really as disproportionately shallow and self-absorbed as those depicted by Frank? Let's hope not. With two exceptions all of Frank's profile subjects appear focused on buying more and bigger houses, bigger and fancier yachts, gaudier jewelry or just plain "wealth enhancement". Every character in the book apparently has perfect health and one opines that rich people "think they'll never die." It's seems as if the people in this book will think to themselves on their death beds "I wish I'd lived my life differently. I should have put more money early on into higher return emerging market equities and installed a plasma screen TV in every room on my yacht. Now it's too late." Not a single person quoted by Frank expresses meaningful spiritual beliefs, although perhaps the wealthy leftwing activist Democrats profiled by Frank believe using their money to defeat political candidates favored by Christian conservatives is a spiritual calling.

There's no reason to believe that Frank's profile subjects are typical of the majority of wealthy Americans, and, in fact, I've seen statistics that imply they're not. Perhaps Frank, a Wall Street Journal reporter, chose people to present as the wealthy norm in the current journalistic fashion of using only information and examples that "move the story forward". Or maybe he's simply trying to reel in Richistani wannabes with tabloid style fantasy tales.

It's hard to know who to recommend this book to because it's hard to tell who it's aimed at. It doesn't purport to tell you how to get rich or how to preserve wealth after you acquire it. There's certainly no insightful wisdom to be gleaned. I guess it could be a guidebook for the newly rich who can't think of enough things to buy or complain or worry about. The book's blurb promises "a revealing and funny journey through Richistan." But it fails to deliver much that's revealing; everyone already knows rich people own more houses, cars and gadgets than they can actually use and hire non-rich people to do things they don't like to do themselves. And is it really funny when one of the book's rich subjects bribes a Mexican customs official to frighten Frank by falsely accusing him of smuggling, or when another one ridicules the customers who made him rich by making a rubber stamp to impress the phrase "Get a Life" on sappy but sincere testimonial letters and thank-you notes? Oh, those wacky billionaire pranksters!

Instead of reading Richistan my money and time would have been better spent seeking out books with role models and advice that can guide the rich and non-rich alike toward how to live well, help those in need and be grateful for whatever blessings circumstances, fortune or effort have bestowed on one's life. And, no matter what faith or worldview you profess, the next time you're in a hotel that provides Gideon Bibles (does the Four Seasons have those?) flip to Luke 13-21, the Parable of the Rich Fool, and contemplate its timeless message.

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