Volume 43, Number 7 · April 18, 1996
How to Succeed in Business
By Jeff Madrick
Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist
by Roger Lowenstein
Random House, 473 pp., $27.50
Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve
by George Soros, by Byron Wien, by Krisztina Koenen
John Wiley, 326 pp., $19.95 (paper)
Soros: The Life, Times, and Trading Secrets of the World's Greatest Investor
by Robert Slater
Irwin, 269 pp., $25.00
Citizen Turner: The Wild Rise of an American Tycoon
by Robert Goldberg, by Gerald Jay Goldberg
Harcourt Brace, 525 pp., $27.00
It Ain't As Easy As It Looks (out of print)
by Porter Bibb
Crown, 468 pp.
During the past fifteen or twenty years, after several decades in which the distance between America's rich and poor was relatively narrow, the distribution of wealth has again skewed dramatically in favor of the rich. One percent of Americans today account for some 40 percent of the nation's personal wealth, about the same proportion as at the end of the Roaring Twenties. (In the early 1970s, the top 1 percent had only half that share.) Wealth in the US is now the most unevenly distributed in the advanced world.[1] When Forbes magazine first published its list of the 400 richest Americans in 1982, one needed a mere $100 million to qualify. Last year, the poorest of the 400 was worth more than $340 million. Consumer prices on average rose by only about 60 percent over this period, so inflation has accounted for only a small portion of this increase in individual wealth.
Review, 5880 words
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