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Overview
Fifteen families. Four hundred years. The complex saga of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite in America's history.
For decades, writers from Cleveland Amory to Joseph Alsop to the editors of Politico have proclaimed the diminishment of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, who for generations were the dominant socio-cultural-political force in America. While the WASP elite has, in the last half century, indeed drifted from American centrality to the periphery, its relevance and impact remain, as Michael Gross reveals in his compelling chronicle.
From Colonial America's founding settlements through the Gilded Age to the present day, Gross traces the complex legacy of American WASPs--their profound accomplishments and egregious failures--through the lives of fifteen influential individuals and their very privileged, sometimes intermarried families. As the Bradford, Randolph, Morris, Biddle, Sanford, Peabody and Whitney clans progress, prosper and periodically stumble, defining aspects in the four-century sweep of American history emerge: our wide, oft-contentious religious diversity; the deep scars of slavery, genocide, and intolerance; the creation and sometime mis-use of astonishing economic and political power; an enduring belief in the future; an instinct to offset inequity with philanthropy; an equal capacity for irresponsible, sometimes wanton, behavior.
"American society was supposed to be different," writes Gross, "but for most of our history we have had a patriciate, an aristocracy, a hereditary oligarchic upper class, who initiated the American national experiment." In previous acclaimed books such as 740 Park and Rogues' Gallery, Gross has explored elite culture in microcosm; expanding the canvas, Flight of the WASP chronicles it across four centuries and fifteen generations in an ambitious and consequential contribution to American history.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9780802161864
- ISBN-10: 0802161863
- Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
- Publish Date: November 2023
- Dimensions: 9.06 x 5.83 x 1.81 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.45 pounds
- Page Count: 480
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There are WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants), the demographic that dominated American culture well into the 20th century, and there are WASPs, the subset of the demographic that the late political columnist Joseph W. Alsop labeled the “WASP Ascendancy.” These were the Americans who, Michael Gross writes in his delightfully provocative new book, formed “a hereditary oligarchic upper class” for most of our history. This ruling class, Gross admits, was not a monolith. But despite internal disputes, it ran the government and economy and defined the culture of the American experiment for 350 years. Now WASP power is in eclipse. That’s not a completely bad thing, Gross says, because in addition to founding the Republic and enshrining lofty ideals, WASPs enslaved some, excluded others, fattened their wallets and jealously guarded their privileges. He writes that the presidency of Donald Trump “represented the clan’s nadir—a repudiation of the tattered remains of WASP virtue.” Still, Gross wonders if today, “a selfish, narcissistic, tribal, atomized nation might still look to WASPs for a restorative example of America’s civic conscience.” This is the argument of Flight of the WASP: The Rise, Fall, and Future of America’s Original Ruling Class. The theory—though absorbing and debatable—isn’t the star of the show. The book’s real delight lies in its brisk biographies of the people who illustrate the ascent and descent of WASP hegemony. Gross begins with the Pilgrim leader William Bradford, who helped establish the New England theocracy that eventually gave rise to the ideals and practices of American self-government. A marvelous chapter spotlights the too-little appreciated Gouverneur Morris, often called “Penman of the Constitution.” Gross also describes less savory figures like John Randolph of Virginia, a virulent advocate for slavery who infamously caned an opponent on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Henry Fairfield Osborn, an esteemed paleontologist and longtime head of the American Museum of Natural History—and, alas, co-founder of the wildly racist American Eugenics Society. Gross’ choices of biographical subjects are unexpected, even idiosyncratic. They will convince many readers of his overall argument, or send them on to further reading. Well-researched and well-written, Gross’ portrait gallery will, if nothing else, illuminate the odd corners of the lives of our nation’s elite and American history itself.
There are WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants), the demographic that dominated American culture well into the 20th century, and there are WASPs, the subset of the demographic that the late political columnist Joseph W. Alsop labeled the “WASP Ascendancy.” These were the Americans who, Michael Gross writes in his delightfully provocative new book, formed “a hereditary oligarchic upper class” for most of our history. This ruling class, Gross admits, was not a monolith. But despite internal disputes, it ran the government and economy and defined the culture of the American experiment for 350 years. Now WASP power is in eclipse. That’s not a completely bad thing, Gross says, because in addition to founding the Republic and enshrining lofty ideals, WASPs enslaved some, excluded others, fattened their wallets and jealously guarded their privileges. He writes that the presidency of Donald Trump “represented the clan’s nadir—a repudiation of the tattered remains of WASP virtue.” Still, Gross wonders if today, “a selfish, narcissistic, tribal, atomized nation might still look to WASPs for a restorative example of America’s civic conscience.” This is the argument of Flight of the WASP: The Rise, Fall, and Future of America’s Original Ruling Class. The theory—though absorbing and debatable—isn’t the star of the show. The book’s real delight lies in its brisk biographies of the people who illustrate the ascent and descent of WASP hegemony. Gross begins with the Pilgrim leader William Bradford, who helped establish the New England theocracy that eventually gave rise to the ideals and practices of American self-government. A marvelous chapter spotlights the too-little appreciated Gouverneur Morris, often called “Penman of the Constitution.” Gross also describes less savory figures like John Randolph of Virginia, a virulent advocate for slavery who infamously caned an opponent on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Henry Fairfield Osborn, an esteemed paleontologist and longtime head of the American Museum of Natural History—and, alas, co-founder of the wildly racist American Eugenics Society. Gross’ choices of biographical subjects are unexpected, even idiosyncratic. They will convince many readers of his overall argument, or send them on to further reading. Well-researched and well-written, Gross’ portrait gallery will, if nothing else, illuminate the odd corners of the lives of our nation’s elite and American history itself.