The new gilded age - David Remnick

In keeping with its tradition of sending writers out into America to take the pulse
of our citizens and civilization, The New Yorker over the past decade has reported
on the unprecedented economy and how it has changed the ways in which we live. This
new anthology collects the best of these profiles, essays, and articles, which depict,
in the magazine's inimitable style, the mega-, meta-, monster-wealth created in this,
our new Gilded Age.

Who are the barons of the new economy? Profiles of Martha
Stewart by Joan Didion, Bill Gates by Ken Auletta, and Alan Greenspan by John Cassidy
reveal the personal histories of our most influential citizens, people who affect
our daily lives even more than we know. Who really understands the Web? Malcolm Gladwell
analyzes the economics of e-commerce in "Clicks and Mortar." Profiles of two of the
Internet's most respected analysts, George Gilder and Mary Meeker, expose the human
factor in hot stocks, declining issues, and the instant fortunes created by an IPO.
And in "The Kids in the Conference Room," Nicholas Lemann meets McKinsey & Company's
business analysts, the twenty-two-year-olds hired to advise America's CEOs on the
future of their business, and the economy.

And what defines this new age,
one that was unimaginable even five years ago? Susan Orlean hangs out with one of
New York City's busiest real estate brokers ("I Want This Apartment"). A clicking
stampede of Manolo Blahniks can be heard in Michael Specter's "High-Heel Heaven."
Tony Horwitz visits the little inn in the little town where moguls graze ("The Inn
Crowd"). Meghan Daum flees her maxed-out credit cards. Brendan Gill lunches with
Brooke Astor at the Metropolitan Club. And Calvin Trillin, in his masterly "Marisa
and Jeff," portrays the young and fresh faces of greed.

Eras often begin
gradually and end abruptly, and the people who live through extraordinary periods
of history do so unaware of the unique qualities of their time. The flappers and
tycoons of the 1920s thought the bootleg, and the speculation, would flow perpetually-until
October 1929. The shoulder pads and the junk bonds of the 1980s came to feel normal-until
October 1987. Read as a whole, The New Gilded Age portrays America, here, today,
now-an epoch so exuberant and flush and in thrall of risk that forecasts of its conclusion
are dismissed as Luddite brays. Yet under The New Yorker's examination, our current
day is ex-posed as a special time in history: affluent and aggressive, prosperous
and peaceful, wired and wild, and, ultimately, finite.