Allen, Michael Patrick. The Founding Fortunes: A New Anatomy of the
Super-Rich Families in America. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1989. 438 pages.
The author of this book is a sociology professor at Washington State
University who sees himself in the tradition of Ferdinand Lundberg and G.
William Domhoff. Lundberg's 1000-page "The Rich and the Super-Rich" became a
number-one bestseller in 1968. Allen's book is more current, and he includes
an appendix (pages 307-392) with a half-page on each of 160 family fortunes,
making it especially suitable for NameBase. Allen focuses particularly on
family money and his prose is straightforward and scholarly, while Lundberg
is irreverent and almost wild. Both books include material on self-made and
inherited wealth, the influence of money in politics, lifestyles, legal
loopholes for tax avoidance, and philanthropy through private foundations.
Domhoff is another scholar in the same tradition, although his books
focus less on private wealth for its own sake, and more on the influence of
quasi-official elites on government decision-making. The premise of all
three scholars is that American egalitarianism and political pluralism is a
myth, and that some form of class analysis might not be inappropriate. (In
other words, they've assembled their advanced degrees and research skills,
complete with thousands of footnotes. And then like someone who has been
reporting live from the scene for too many hours, they wearily look up from
the library stacks and announce, "This just in: little guy gets screwed!")
ISBN 0-525-48484-1
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