Between the Crazy Rich Asians books, I decided to read a non-fiction book about the wealthy to ground me further into reality. I learned about this book from the NPR podcast “Hidden Brain.” I actually requested that my public library acquire this book. I only resort to doing that a few times a year.

The podcast interview let me to think it was more of a casual non fiction book about wealth managers and their ultra high net worth client, but in reality, this is an academic book. It is published by Harvard Press and is about a study that the author held with other wealth managers. As an academic book, there are many footnotes and citations. It is not extremely dry and is rather better written than a lot of academic studies. However, it is not necessarily a book for the average reader learning about wealth managers. The language and theorizing in this book is more academic focussed. It helps to have a background in economics, political science, policy, and law. As I did use to study these topics, I was familiar with a lot of the theories and authors mentioned in this book.

The book has tidbits and anecdotes from wealth managers and how they are changing the landscape of the sovereign state and political economy. There is wide discussion about wealth inequality. The nature of wealth managers is to preserve the wealth of the rich and allow their families to inherit their economic power. As with a lot of discussion about the wealthy and inequality, it’s rather sad how much the wealthy have over most of the world in this way.

I liked this book and it’s a good reminder of a profession that the average person does not much about. It’s interesting looking at their perspective and their ability to change policies and client behaviour as well. I do not necessarily recommend this book to everyone because I believe my interest and bacjground in wealth, economics, and politics helped. I do think the book is readable even for the average non-fiction reader. I quite liked it. I wish more academic studies were written this way.

I recommend this book to those very interested in the topic of wealth management and also, for those are actually wealthy (no one reading this blog). At least if I ever become wealthy enough, I know who I can look for and understand their services better.

Read July 4-8, 2018.