Chris Lehmann is employed, ever precariously, as an editor for Yahoo! News, Bookforum, and The Baffler. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, Ana Marie Cox, and a quartet of excellent pets.
“This book made me laugh and cry. And wish I were a plutocrat.
Chris Lehmann is an amazing writer. I will read his books until I
die.”
—Gary Shteyngart
“What a delight it is to have—finally!—an entire book in which
Lehmann gives the plutocrats of this world the drubbing they
deserve—in delicious detail. His scoffing is a tonic.”
—Thomas Frank
“I am always searching for books that can educate my six grown-up
children, not to mention certain recidivist friends, about how this
country came to be seduced, pushed, and betrayed into its present
state by the money power and its Wall Street–Washington nerve
center. When I read Chris Lehmann’s Rich People Things, I was so
impressed by its wit, wisdom, and acuity on this matter, by the
variety, aptness, and richness of its perceptions and examples,
that I bought ten copies to give to family and friends. With my own
money. Hard cash. Can I say more? Well, yes, I can. I wish I had
written it.”
—Michael C. Thomas, author, Love and Money
“Scathing, scintillating chapters on Malcolm Gladwell; on the
Times, and on its ‘chirpy’ and delusional columnist David Brooks;
on Wired magazine’s breathless paeans to new media’s broken
promises; and on other ventures and adventurers who, often
unwittingly, work hard to suppress or deflect their own and their
audiences’ understandings of what consumer and casino-finance
capitalism are doing to us.”
—Talking Points Memo
“Lehmann began his economic blog inspired by ‘the omission of real
economic conditions from the accounting of the republic’s
collective life.’ Now in book form . . . Lehmann illustrates the
ideas, institutions, and individuals he sees as tools for the rich
to keep themselves rich—or make themselves richer. The list of
offenders includes the US Constitution, the iPad, Reality TV, and
the New York Times (in particular, columnist David Brooks). The
author explores meritocracy, class warfare, the ‘powerful
intellectual opiate’ called the free market, and other ‘hoary
American myths.’ Chapters include a description of Atlas Shrugged
as a ‘doorstop-sized digest of ideological boilerplate disguised as
fictional dialogue, plotting, and character development’ and
memoirs, or ‘memoirs,’ (James Frey makes the list) that allow
affluent readers to ‘cast one’s fellow citizens as monolithically
soulful, suffering, and exoticized others.’ Lehmann concludes his
wholly entertaining effort with a particularly astute explanation
of how the myth of the middle class has left Americans with an
inadequate vocabulary to discuss economic woes; instead, ‘we are
committed to the dogmatic belief that we are all affluent
entrepreneurs waiting to happen.’ Brutal.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Perusing Mr. Lehmann’s volume I found myself wondering, again and
again, what exactly is the target psychographic of this veritable
wardrobe montage of proletarian resentments? I visualized:
employees of used bookstores and/or independent coffee shops,
people who don’t own televisions, people who do own televisions on
which they occasionally watch Portlandia and other shows they are
capable of enjoying with substantial reservations, people who
commute to their titular jobs on bicycles they have owned for more
than five years, bartenders with a higher than average propensity
to reward ‘regular’ customers with complimentary beverages (thus
cheating their bosses, which they excuse by some deluded ethical
calculus by which the right to steal is a just reward for being
sufficiently overeducated to command the loyalty of ‘like-minded’
freeloaders), titular business owners foolish enough to employ such
mediocrities, people at once eminently capable of constructing
formidable and eloquent arguments making the case for socialized
health care on the basis of a litany of broad-based macroeconomic
factors and yet chronically incapable of holding down jobs that
provide health insurance, childish people who know nothing of money
and yet ceaselessly attempt to provoke class warfare by plugging
loaded terms like rich and millionaire into otherwise civilized
conversations about aspirational luxury, tastemaking lifestyles,
the urgent need for deficit reduction by way of entitlement reform,
etc . . . . ‘parasites,’ in other words. Given that the authorship
of a nonfiction book is widely understood to be an undertaking
aimed primarily at marketing one’s services as a paid motivational
speaker, it’s hard to imagine why Mr. Lehmann would squander 256
pages addressing such a fragmented and under-capitalized audience.
Having read Rich People Things in its entirety, however, it
occurred to me that the parasite class does, at least, have time to
read books, and that Mr. Lehmann would be an abysmal
motivational speaker.”
—Moe Tkacik, unemployed leftist
This book made me laugh and cry. And wish I were a plutocrat.
Chris Lehmann is an amazing writer. I will read his books until I
die.”
Gary Shteyngart
What a delight it is to havefinally!an entire book in which
Lehmann gives the plutocrats of this world the drubbing they
deservein delicious detail. His scoffing is a tonic.”
Thomas Frank
I am always searching for books that can educate my six grown-up
children, not to mention certain recidivist friends, about how this
country came to be seduced, pushed, and betrayed into its present
state by the money power and its Wall StreetWashington nerve
center. When I read Chris Lehmann’s Rich People Things, I was so
impressed by its wit, wisdom, and acuity on this matter, by the
variety, aptness, and richness of its perceptions and examples,
that I bought ten copies to give to family and friends. With my own
money. Hard cash. Can I say more? Well, yes, I can. I wish I had
written it.”
Michael C. Thomas, author, Love and Money
Scathing, scintillating chapters on Malcolm Gladwell; on the
Times, and on its chirpy’ and delusional columnist David Brooks;
on Wired magazine’s breathless paeans to new media’s broken
promises; and on other ventures and adventurers who, often
unwittingly, work hard to suppress or deflect their own and their
audiences’ understandings of what consumer and casino-finance
capitalism are doing to us.”
Talking Points Memo
Lehmann began his economic blog inspired by the omission of real
economic conditions from the accounting of the republic’s
collective life.’ Now in book form . . . Lehmann illustrates the
ideas, institutions, and individuals he sees as tools for the rich
to keep themselves richor make themselves richer. The list of
offenders includes the US Constitution, the iPad, Reality TV, and
the New York Times (in particular, columnist David Brooks). The
author explores meritocracy, class warfare, the powerful
intellectual opiate’ called the free market, and other hoary
American myths.’ Chapters include a description of Atlas Shrugged
as a doorstop-sized digest of ideological boilerplate disguised as
fictional dialogue, plotting, and character development’ and
memoirs, or memoirs,’ (James Frey makes the list) that allow
affluent readers to cast one’s fellow citizens as monolithically
soulful, suffering, and exoticized others.’ Lehmann concludes his
wholly entertaining effort with a particularly astute explanation
of how the myth of the middle class has left Americans with an
inadequate vocabulary to discuss economic woes; instead, we are
committed to the dogmatic belief that we are all affluent
entrepreneurs waiting to happen.’ Brutal.”
Publishers Weekly
Perusing Mr. Lehmann’s volume I found myself wondering, again and
again, what exactly is the target psychographic of this veritable
wardrobe montage of proletarian resentments? I visualized:
employees of used bookstores and/or independent coffee shops,
people who don’t own televisions, people who do own televisions on
which they occasionally watch Portlandia and other shows they are
capable of enjoying with substantial reservations, people who
commute to their titular jobs on bicycles they have owned for more
than five years, bartenders with a higher than average propensity
to reward regular’ customers with complimentary beverages (thus
cheating their bosses, which they excuse by some deluded ethical
calculus by which the right to steal is a just reward for being
sufficiently overeducated to command the loyalty of like-minded’
freeloaders), titular business owners foolish enough to employ such
mediocrities, people at once eminently capable of constructing
formidable and eloquent arguments making the case for socialized
health care on the basis of a litany of broad-based macroeconomic
factors and yet chronically incapable of holding down jobs that
provide health insurance, childish people who know nothing of money
and yet ceaselessly attempt to provoke class warfare by plugging
loaded terms like rich and millionaire into otherwise civilized
conversations about aspirational luxury, tastemaking lifestyles,
the urgent need for deficit reduction by way of entitlement reform,
etc . . . . parasites,’ in other words. Given that the authorship
of a nonfiction book is widely understood to be an undertaking
aimed primarily at marketing one’s services as a paid motivational
speaker, it’s hard to imagine why Mr. Lehmann would squander 256
pages addressing such a fragmented and under-capitalized audience.
Having read Rich People Things in its entirety, however, it
occurred to me that the parasite class does, at least, have time to
read books, and that Mr. Lehmann would be an abysmal
motivational speaker.”
Moe Tkacik, unemployed leftist
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