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Great works of literature, by the likes of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton, can help us to better understand the social ramifications of high-end inequality - not just in the authors' eras but today.
List of contents
Introduction; PART ONE: ENGLAND AND FRANCE DURING THE AGE OF REVOLUTION; Why Aren't Things Better Than This? Class Relations Within the Top One Percent in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice; A Rising Tide Rocks All Boats: The Threat of Rising Prosperity in Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir; Arrivistes, Rentiers, Mandarins, and Flunkies in Honoré de Balzac's Le Père Goriot; PART TWO: ENGLAND FROM THE 1840S THROUGH THE START OF WORLD WAR I; Why Do "Scrooge Truthers" Hate Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol?; Not to Blame? Plutocrats, Capitalism, and Foreigners in Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now; Unconnected: Rentier Intellectuals Uber Alles in E.M. Forster's Howards End; PART THREE: GILDED AGE AMERICA; Anti-Success Manual? Mark Twain's and Charles Dudley Warner's The Gilded Age; No Success Like Failure? Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth; Superhero or Bungler? Frank Cowperwood / Charles Yerkes in Theodore Dreiser's The Financier and The Titan; Conclusion; Index.
About the author
Daniel Shaviro is the Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation at New York University Law School, where his research focuses on tax policy and distributive justice. He is also the author of the satirical novel
Getting It.
Summary
Great works of literature, by the likes of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton, can help us to better understand the social ramifications of high-end inequality – not just in the authors' eras but today.
