Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich
Written by Robert Frank
Narrated by Dick Hill
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
From "Butler School," where domestics are specially trained to serve the newly wealthy, to self-help groups for coping with the strains of $10 million incomes, you'll discover how the nouveaux riches learn to be riche. In addition, Frank investigates where their money is going. With so much in the hands of so few, the personal whims of the extremely wealthy can make or break charities and research foundations. Will they support cancer research or the arts? Supernatural exploration or archaeological digs? The influence wielded by the newly wealthy goes far beyond their fashion choices or participation in reality TV shows.
Richistan looks behind the glitz to find the real story behind new money and its impact on the richest nation in the world.
Robert Frank
Raised on an Iowa farm, Bob spent his summer afternoons in corn fields daydreaming of adventures in faraway lands. At seventeen, while war raged in Southeast Asia, he joined the Army and graduated from West Point as an airborne paratrooper. But his years of duty were spent staring at Russian machine guns during the Cold War.Much of the next twenty years saw him as a road warrior for an oil company traveling to every God forsaken corner of the world: Nigerian savannas, Saudi Arabian deserts, Sumatran jungles of Indonesia -- and even Bakersfield, California.Always known for fantastic storytelling, Bob kept the entire office intrigued and rolling with laughter from his adventures. He finally ended his travels and set on a path to deliver the Third Eye Trilogy.THERAPIST & IANDSWhen first writing the Trilogy, he had difficulty accurately describing past life regressions from the eyes of both the practitioner and the subject. So he went back to school and became a certified and registered hypnotherapist, specializing in past life regressions. He actively performs past life regressions similar to what Clay and Shali did in the Third Eye Trilogy.Bob serves on the Board of Directors of the 35 year old International Association for Near Death Studies (IANDS). After working with hypnotherapy to access the inner mind, his interests in this area drove him to work with studies for aiding people who have died and returned from the "other side". Dealing with so many "enlightened" individuals has tremendously opened his eyes to the real world around us; often not the one that we are led to believe.Pen Name:Books 1 and 2 were written under the pen name Lynn Boston to shield his interests from his role as Vice President of a Fortune 500 company. He no longer carries that burden and now uses his real name. It was "out of the closet" for him.Phoenix, Arizona is home, where he enjoys three seasons of the year.
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Reviews for Richistan
13 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I wish there was an update now that we are 10 years past the financial crisis. This book ended right before it but it is still relevant, showing the opportunities that come with the Richistan market and show you the ways people created niches that resulted in wealth. Full of stats and stories. I loved it and my husband I had a great book club about it.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Frank, who writes for the Wall Street Journal, has examined the inhabitants of a virtual country within the United States made up of the more than eight million millionaires, focusing especially on the richest of the rich, those worth between 100 million and 1 billion dollars. These people have their own sometimes intriguing and sometimes peculiar lifestyle, and face problems the rest of us are free of: households full of servants and managers who must themselves be managed, the concern over how their children can be raised not to be Paris Hilton (solution: leave them with nothing), and how to spend their money in a way that will impress the ever-richer superrich. Not all is excess and frivolity, however. These people have found a new approach to philanthropy that is intriguing, and their tendency to pursue work as a creative endeavor is worthy of respect. Unfortunately, the book was published just before the current economic downturn, so one wonders how many of those nouveau riche are still riche.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Robert 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 column 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.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A thoroughly depressing book, in part because the author attempts to stand on “unbiased” ground while exploring the lives of those whose net worth is over $10 million. Inherently raises the question of whether it’s possible to consume at that level and still honestly say you’re giving proper attention to the poor and downtrodden. The chapter on performance philanthropy is worth noting—much more so than the chapter on relieving the cramped space of the super-yacht by paring them with mini-yacht companion ships.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Describes the lifestyles of america's wealthiest citizens along with the social and economic forces that helped them achieve their wealth. Some of the descriptions of extravagance were mildly entertaining, but overall the book did not explore its subject in much depth.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5It was an easy, interesting read, but I went to write a review barely a week later and couldn't remember a thing. And that isn't normal for me.