#ReadThis #FlightoftheWASP by #MoverandShaker #MichaelGross @MGrossGripepad Publication Date: November 14, 2023
Who needs Flight of the Bumblebee when you've got Flight of the WASP?!
It comes out in a few short days on November 14th, so get ready to party between two covers!
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It's never been who you know, it's WHOM YOU KNOW and mirror mirror on the wall, where did we learn that at all? At Miss Porter's School from Mover and Shaker Rennie McQuilkin in 10th Grade English class! Peachy and all the girls learned that if they didn't know proper English and how to speak and write perfectly, they would not be invited to the right cocktail parties in life. Well, looks like someone learned her grammar because she sees Michael Gross at all the right cocktail parties now too and you'll see he references Farmington on page 241.
Past Michael Gross Hits on Whom You Know include:
So, we were delighted to see Michael's masterpiece, which he began pre-Covid.
It's a completely inventive take on American History, and for everyone that asks Peachy what one does with a B.A. in American History from Boston College (Jesuit! Yes, Peachy is Catholic and therefore not a WASP though she is an ancient), here's your answer.
Obviously, we are not talking insects here. White Anglo Saxon Protestants have unequivocally been the ruling class of American society at its origin. If you think you know everything about them, all we have to say is that you are not woke until you read this by Michael Gross. It may be hot and trendy right now to trumpet multiculturalism and every color under the rainbow, but we'd encourage you to only embrace one value which is all we have ever said in 28,000 posts and that value is excellence.
WASPS value it.
You should too. And you ought to learn about them because you don't know all there is to know until November 14th. Focused on mainstream Protestants, Flight of the Wasp shows how WASPs colonized the USA in the original 13 colonies and invented America with socioeconomic force with status, and how they yield economic and political power.
Gross correctly states on page 3:
"For we would all benefit if the traits WASPs idealized, like humility, responsibility, simple civility, and lack of pretension, which seem endangered in the world today, were revived and again revered."
Everyone, just please behave. For more on that, read Etiquette from Connecticut. We love the JPM references and do check out his amazing library.
Of course the Pilgrims matter (and we ought to know...up with the bottom of page 29): but Gross is on the money when he says St. Augustine is America's oldest city thanks to Spain. Perhaps you have seen Peachy in her St. Augustine gear as she has gone there her entire life. Gross starts at the northern beginning with William Bradford, and we love the level of detail he delves into for the characters which deserve a standing ovation and a crowd wave if reading a book was a football stadium. The French are credited going back to 1534 (p. 36) but the shenanigans going on in the Louvre, the Convent and the carriage ride in the Bois du Boulogne evidence that the Wasps are anything but stuffy. (p. 86)
Did you know the Pilgrims might have settled Manhattan? Fascinating. Read page 26. The stories leap off the pages and the hits keep coming. Despite being over 400 pages, Flight of the WASP is endlessly entertaining and will be better than anything you read on the beach this summer. Especially if you loved Mover and Shaker Carol Wallace's To Marry an English Lord, you will love this too.
We loved Part Five with Henry Shelton Sanford and all the Florida stories! He was the original Florida man and you'll wonder what he would have thought today.
In 2009 we interviewed Consuelo Vanderbilt even before we interviewed Michael Gross and we featured her again in 2011. She is always up to something exciting with SOHO MUSE and you'll see some of her relatives in this work. (Peachy on Soho Muse.) Adaptation-Part 10- shows three steps forward that are totally thought-provoking. We shall not give it all away.
In 1993 Wasps stopped being the majority and by 2014 they were just under a third of the population (p. 417). And we agree, they will return to relevance but really, haven't they ALWAYS been relevant? The sting of the wasp is indeed an antidote.
For anyone that thinks this is a book on opinion, you should know it contains facts. Gross references data with SEIs (income, wealth, education). Grounded in a commanding mastery of statistically proven American history, Michael Gross has done it again! Obviously, this will be a bestseller.
Finally, don't miss the photography included which enhances the fascination of each story the pictures respectively support. And we know our readers LOVE TO SHOP. This makes a great Christmas present!
Remember, virtue is not hereditary.
FLIGHT OF THE WASP BY MOVER AND SHAKER MICHAEL GROSS IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED BY WHOM YOU KNOW.
For decades, writers from Cleveland Amory to Joseph Alsop to the editors of Politico have proclaimed the diminishment of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, who for generations were the dominant socio-cultural-political force in America. While the WASP elite has, in the last half century, indeed drifted from American centrality to the periphery, its relevance and impact remain, as Michael Gross reveals in FLIGHT OF THE WASP: The Rise, Fall, and Future of America’s Original Ruling Class (Atlantic Monthly Press; Publication Date: November 14, 2023; 978-0-8021-6186-4), his compelling chronicle of the WASPs in our history.
From Colonial America’s founding settlements through the Gilded Age to the present day, Gross traces the four-century sweep of America’s history through the complicated legacy of American WASPs—their profound accomplishments and egregious failures—focusing on the lives of ten influential individuals and fifteen very privileged, often intermarried families. As the Bradford, Morris, Randolph, Biddle, Sanford, Peabody, and Whitney clans, among others, progress, prosper, and stumble, defining themes of our history emerge: our wide, oft-contentious religious diversity; the deep scars of slavery, genocide, and intolerance; the creation and sometime misuse of astonishing economic, political, and social power; an enduring belief in the future; an instinct to offset inequity with philanthropy; an equal capacity for irresponsible, sometimes wanton, behavior.
“American society was supposed to be different,” writes Gross, “but for most of our history we have had a patriciate, an aristocracy, a hereditary oligarchic upper class, who initiated the American national experiment.” In previous acclaimed books such as 740 Park and Rogues’ Gallery, Gross has explored elite culture in microcosm; expanding the canvas, FLIGHT OF THE WASP chronicles it across four centuries and fifteen generations in an ambitious and consequential contribution to American history.
MICHAEL GROSS is the author of New York Times bestsellers Model, 740 Park, and House of Outrageous Fortune, as well as Rogues’ Gallery, My Generation, Unreal Estate, and Focus. His journalism has appeared in the New York Times, New York, Esquire, GQ, Vanity Fair, and many other publications around the world. Online, he writes for Air Mail and the Daily Beast. Currently Editor at Large of Palmer: The Palm Beach Reader, he lives in New York City.
Flight of the WASP
By Michael Gross
Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN: 978-0-8021-6186-4
Publication date: November 14, 2023
