Showing results for "The Establishment" in Biographies & Memoirs

An enlightening and entertaining inside look at the lifestyles of America's extremely wealthy from the bestselling author of Our Crowd. It's no secret that the rich are different from the rest of us. But the rich, as author Stephen Birmingham so insightfully points out, are also different from the very rich. There's Society, and then there's Real Society, and it takes multiple generations for families of the former to become entrenched in the latter.

Veering from the hilarious to the tragic, Andrew Mitchell's tales from the parliamentary jungle make for one of the most entertaining political memoirs in years. From his prep school years, straight out of Evelyn Waugh, through the army to Cambridge, the City of London and the Palace of Westminster, Mitchell has passed through a series of British institutions at a time of furious social and political change – in the process becoming rather more cynical about the British Establishment.

Sarah Palin, a hockey mom and small-town mayor, thought her dream of making a difference in Alaskan politics was over when she clashed with the state chairman of her Republican Party and went head-to-head with the powerful Republican governor. In 2006 she became a long-shot candidate for governor, demanding a higher ethical standard in state government. Her populist reform message suddenly became front-page news. Alaskans began listening to her, and they liked what they heard.