A (sometimes unintentionally) funny, narrow view of the wealthy that will tickle the outsider’s fancy.
A tell-it-like-it-is guide to faking it till you make it when it comes to wealth and class.
So you weren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth. What can you do to not only act like you were but to actually make (or perhaps marry into) the kind of money that puts you in the big leagues? Kerney, who comes from old money, has witnessed firsthand the differences between the haves and the have-nots as well as the manners and outlooks that separate old money from new. For chapters, he divides his guide into subjects close to the hearts of the haves (or the wants): On Vacation; Marrying Up; Name-Dropping, Bragging, Bigotry, and Gossip are just a taste of what an aspiring social queen or king will need to study up on if she or he is going to breathe in that rarified atmosphere. While much of Kerney’s advice is simply common sense—learn your table manners and be able to use them with ease, never condescend, don’t tolerate abuse from your spouse—others border on the absurd: Choose, of course, the less foppish Stubbs & Wooten needlepoint slippers, and if you must wear a Medic Alert bracelet, Tiffany’s gold is preferable. And did you know that occupations are a very middle-class concern? Instead, the haves “are much more interested in your interests and pastimes.” As a study in the milieu of the old-fashioned rich, this amusing book would be almost tongue-in-cheek if it weren’t so earnest. Being extremely wealthy—whether a relatively recent state of affairs or a generational hand-me-down—“takes more than hard work….There are not many people born with all that it takes.” Some of the most interesting parts of the book are the anecdotes about Kerney’s family; his grandmother, cousin and other extended family may have been better served by their own biographies. While this book can’t replace the classic tomes on manners and etiquette, it is worth a glance just to see what you’re missing—“top-notch” liquor and caviar, anyone?
A (sometimes unintentionally) funny, narrow view of the wealthy that will tickle the outsider’s fancy.Pub Date: April 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-1495441868
Page Count: 112
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Carefully researched and chilling, if somewhat overwritten.
Comprehensive, myth-busting examination of the Colorado high-school massacre.
“We remember Columbine as a pair of outcast Goths from the Trench Coat Mafia snapping and tearing through their high school hunting down jocks to settle a long-running feud. Almost none of that happened,” writes Cullen, a Denver-based journalist who has spent the past ten years investigating the 1999 attack. In fact, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold conceived of their act not as a targeted school shooting but as an elaborate three-part act of terrorism. First, propane bombs planted in the cafeteria would erupt during lunchtime, indiscriminately slaughtering hundreds of students. The killers, positioned outside the school’s main entrance, would then mow down fleeing survivors. Finally, after the media and rescue workers had arrived, timed bombs in the killers’ cars would explode, wiping out hundreds more. It was only when the bombs in the cafeteria failed to detonate that the killers entered the high school with sawed-off shotguns blazing. Drawing on a wealth of journals, videotapes, police reports and personal interviews, Cullen sketches multifaceted portraits of the killers and the surviving community. He portrays Harris as a calculating, egocentric psychopath, someone who labeled his journal “The Book of God” and harbored fantasies of exterminating the entire human race. In contrast, Klebold was a suicidal depressive, prone to fits of rage and extreme self-loathing. Together they forged a combustible and unequal alliance, with Harris channeling Klebold’s frustration and anger into his sadistic plans. The unnerving narrative is too often undermined by the author’s distracting tendency to weave the killers’ expressions into his sentences—for example, “The boys were shooting off their pipe bombs by then, and, man, were those things badass.” Cullen is better at depicting the attack’s aftermath. Poignant sections devoted to the survivors probe the myriad ways that individuals cope with grief and struggle to interpret and make sense of tragedy.
Carefully researched and chilling, if somewhat overwritten.Pub Date: April 6, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-54693-5
Page Count: 406
Publisher: Twelve
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
Bias notwithstanding, particularly against what's called the "elites" of the legal profession, this is an intriguing look at...
A spirited account of how the relatively recent establishment of the Massachusetts School of Law struggled to survive despite the concentrated opposition of the American Bar Association.
In a style reminiscent of Tracy Kidder, freelance journalist Hagan conjures up a number of the colorful characters who helped launch MSL in the late '80s. Among the more flamboyant actors in this legal drama is Michael Boland, who founded MSL's immediate predecessor, the Commonwealth School of Law. Although it quickly shut down, due to Boland's mismanagement, he made at least one good move in hiring Lawrence Velvel as dean. By Hagan's account, Velvel, who has made a career out of his contrarian positions, was ideally suited to be dean of the fledgling school. After Commonwealth collapsed, Velvel and a cadre of motivated students formed MSL to take its place, offering a new model of legal education that targeted older, working-class students, offering them a practical education in the nuts-and-bolts of practice. With Boland out of the picture, Velvel and his partners still encountered opposition from the ABA, which refused to accredit the school. The central charge here against the ABA is that it seeks to maintain the status quo of the legal profession by stifling innovation and denying an affordable legal education to non-traditional students. Although MSL went as far as bringing an antitrust suit against the organization, it never received the accreditation it needed for perceived legitimacy. Nonetheless, Hagan, whose subjective viewpoint should be assumed, highlights what she considers the school's successes. (MSL, not Hagan, holds the copyright to the book–it's certainly a good piece of recruitment material.)
Bias notwithstanding, particularly against what's called the "elites" of the legal profession, this is an intriguing look at the near-insurmountable hurdles in creating a new breed of law school.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7618-2838-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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