Rich People Things

sub-heading:
With illustrations by Peter Arkle

“Social criticism at its scorching-hot best”

—Barbara Ehrenreich
$16.00

Adding to cart… The item has been added
  • 248 pages
  • 27 black and white illustrations
  • Paperback ISBN 9781935928126
  • E-book ISBN 9781935928133
  • Publication 15 October 2010

about the book

It’s never easy being rich: endless tax avoidance, the Sisyphean search for reliable domestic staff, the never-ending burden of surly stares from the Great Sea of the Unwashed as one goes about one’s rightful business. Toughest of all is simply keeping track of everything one owns. There's so much of it. And personal possessions are just the beginning.

You must keep a gimlet eye, too, on the myriad people and institutions that safeguard your gilded status: politicians, newspapers, financial instruments, branches of government. They all belong to you. But staying on top of what they’re up to is a full time job. What’s an overstretched gazillionaire to do?

Now, with the publication of Rich People Things, the problems of our over-classes are, well, over. In a concise, easy-to-use guide, Chris Lehmann catalogs the fortifications that shelter the opulent from the resentments of the hoi polloi. From ideological stanchions such as the Free Market and the Prosperity Gospel, through the castellation of media, including The New York Times, Wired Magazine and Reality Television, to burly gatekeepers such as David Brooks, Steve Forbes and Alan Greenspan, the well-to-do will find, in these pages, a comforting and comprehensive array of the protections that allow them to sleep sound at night.

For the rest of us, Lehmann's sparkling prose, at the same time pointed and whimsical, together with the clever, teasing illustrations of Peter Arkle, can at least provide a diverting glimpse into how the top one percent maintains an iron grip on almost half of America's financial wealth.


“Since strange fate and television have transformed me from an ORDINARY WRITER into a DERANGED MILLIONAIRE, I can tell you that Chris Lehmann is NO ORDINARY WRITER. Indeed, he captures here, with rare and devastating wit, precisely why and how the rich (by which I mean: ME) are so different from me and you (by which I mean: YOU). If this book were plated in platinum and larded with a million designer labels, I WOULD BUY IT.”

—John Hodgman

Original illustrations for Rich People Things

By Peter Arkle

About The Author / Editor

Chris Lehmann, like many a son of the benighted de-industrialized Midwest, has cobbled together a living as a casualized knowledge worker. He is employed, ever precariously, as an editor for Yahoo! News, BookForum and the Baffler, while dissecting the excesses of his social betters on a still-more marginal moonlighting basis for The Awl.com. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, Ana Marie Cox, and a quartet of excellent pets.

Peter Arkle, lives in New York, where he’s a freelance illustrator of books, magazines and ads (his clients include at least a couple of the rich people’s things featured in this book). He occasionally publishes a newspaper, Peter Arkle News, containing stories and drawings about everyday life.

in the media

Rich People Things

sub-heading:
With illustrations by Peter Arkle

“Social criticism at its scorching-hot best”

—Barbara Ehrenreich
$16.00

Add to Cart

Adding to cart… The item has been added

about the book

It’s never easy being rich: endless tax avoidance, the Sisyphean search for reliable domestic staff, the never-ending burden of surly stares from the Great Sea of the Unwashed as one goes about one’s rightful business. Toughest of all is simply keeping track of everything one owns. There's so much of it. And personal possessions are just the beginning.

You must keep a gimlet eye, too, on the myriad people and institutions that safeguard your gilded status: politicians, newspapers, financial instruments, branches of government. They all belong to you. But staying on top of what they’re up to is a full time job. What’s an overstretched gazillionaire to do?

Now, with the publication of Rich People Things, the problems of our over-classes are, well, over. In a concise, easy-to-use guide, Chris Lehmann catalogs the fortifications that shelter the opulent from the resentments of the hoi polloi. From ideological stanchions such as the Free Market and the Prosperity Gospel, through the castellation of media, including The New York Times, Wired Magazine and Reality Television, to burly gatekeepers such as David Brooks, Steve Forbes and Alan Greenspan, the well-to-do will find, in these pages, a comforting and comprehensive array of the protections that allow them to sleep sound at night.

For the rest of us, Lehmann's sparkling prose, at the same time pointed and whimsical, together with the clever, teasing illustrations of Peter Arkle, can at least provide a diverting glimpse into how the top one percent maintains an iron grip on almost half of America's financial wealth.


“Since strange fate and television have transformed me from an ORDINARY WRITER into a DERANGED MILLIONAIRE, I can tell you that Chris Lehmann is NO ORDINARY WRITER. Indeed, he captures here, with rare and devastating wit, precisely why and how the rich (by which I mean: ME) are so different from me and you (by which I mean: YOU). If this book were plated in platinum and larded with a million designer labels, I WOULD BUY IT.”

—John Hodgman

Original illustrations for Rich People Things

By Peter Arkle

About The Author / Editor

Chris Lehmann, like many a son of the benighted de-industrialized Midwest, has cobbled together a living as a casualized knowledge worker. He is employed, ever precariously, as an editor for Yahoo! News, BookForum and the Baffler, while dissecting the excesses of his social betters on a still-more marginal moonlighting basis for The Awl.com. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, Ana Marie Cox, and a quartet of excellent pets.

Peter Arkle, lives in New York, where he’s a freelance illustrator of books, magazines and ads (his clients include at least a couple of the rich people’s things featured in this book). He occasionally publishes a newspaper, Peter Arkle News, containing stories and drawings about everyday life.

in the media