Cheerful Money cover art

Cheerful Money

Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor

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Cheerful Money

Written by: Tad Friend
Narrated by: William Dufris
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About this listen

Tad Friend's family is nothing if not illustrious: his father was president of Swarthmore College, and at Smith his mother came in second in a poetry contest judged by W. H. Auden -- to Sylvia Plath. For centuries, Wasps like his ancestors dominated American life. But then, in the '60s, their fortunes began to fall. As a young man, Friend noticed that his family tree, for all its glories, was full of alcoholics, depressives, and reckless eccentrics. Yet his identity had already been shaped by the family's age-old traditions and expectations. Part memoir, part family history, and part cultural study of the long swoon of the American Wasp, Cheerful Money is a captivating examination of a cultural crack-up and a man trying to escape its wreckage.

©2009 Tad Friend (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Social Classes & Economic Disparity Sociology Writing, Research & Publishing Guides

Critic Reviews

"With its WASPish brew of aunts, alcoholics, and dashed promise (not to mention an assortment of Inkys, Wassas, Lettys, Goggys, and Hannys), Cheerful Money goes down like a bitter-sweet late-summer cocktail made with a jigger of Cheever and a splash of Wodehouse." (Graydon Carter )
“Funny and enlightening.” ( BookPage)
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