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Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence Paperback – May 14, 2019

by Rachel Sherman (Author)
3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 173 ratings
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A surprising and revealing look at how today’s elite view their wealth and place in society

From TV’s “real housewives” to The Wolf of Wall Street, our popular culture portrays the wealthy as materialistic and entitled. But what do we really know about those who live on “easy street”? In this penetrating book, Rachel Sherman draws on rare in-depth interviews that she conducted with fifty affluent New Yorkers―from hedge fund financiers and artists to stay-at-home mothers―to examine their lifestyle choices and understanding of privilege. Sherman upends images of wealthy people as invested only in accruing social advantages for themselves and their children. Instead, these liberal elites, who believe in diversity and meritocracy, feel conflicted about their position in a highly unequal society. As the distance between rich and poor widens, Uneasy Street not only explores the lives of those at the top but also sheds light on how extreme inequality comes to seem ordinary and acceptable to the rest of us.

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Previous page
  1. Print length
    328 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Princeton University Press
  4. Publication date
    May 14, 2019
  5. Dimensions
    5.2 x 1 x 8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0691191905
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0691191904
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Sherman offers something new and surprising: a look inside the 1 per cent's minds. . . . She shifts our understanding of today's dominant class."--Simon Kuper, Financial Times

"Sherman takes a dispassionate approach to find out how those who are 'benefitting from rising economic inequality' experience 'their own social advantages.' She elicits her subjects' thoughts about work and productivity, charitable giving, marital discord and more. Worthwhile humanizing ensues, as do plenty of squirm-inducing moments."--John Williams, New York Times Book Review

"There have been many cogent analyses of income inequality. Sociologist Rachel Sherman's welcome addition probes the psychology and socio-economics of affluence."--Barb Kiser, Nature

"We don't know as much about affluent people as we think we do. Caricatures abound, but the socioeconomically lucky don't often offer themselves up for study. That all changed with Rachel Sherman's Uneasy Street. . . . With each reading, I'm a little more unsettled, in the best possible way."--Ron Lieber, New York Times

Review

“We don’t know as much about affluent people as we think we do. Caricatures abound, but the socioeconomically lucky don’t often offer themselves up for study. That all changed with Rachel Sherman’s Uneasy Street. . . . With each reading, I’m a little more unsettled, in the best possible way.”―Ron Lieber, New York Times

“There have been many cogent analyses of income inequality. Sociologist Rachel Sherman’s welcome addition probes the psychology and socio-economics of affluence.”―Barb Kiser, Nature

“Sherman takes a dispassionate approach to find out how those who are ‘benefitting from rising economic inequality’ experience ‘their own social advantages.’ She elicits her subjects’ thoughts about work and productivity, charitable giving, marital discord and more. Worthwhile humanizing ensues, as do plenty of squirm-inducing moments.”―John Williams, New York Times Book Review

“Sherman offers something new and surprising: a look inside the 1 per cent’s minds. . . . She shifts our understanding of today’s dominant class.”―Simon Kuper, Financial Times

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Princeton University Press; 2nd edition (May 14, 2019)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 328 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0691191905
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0691191904
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 1 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 173 ratings

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Rachel Sherman

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Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
3.9 out of 5
173 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

GoodBookGirl
5.0 out of 5 stars The Wealthy “Middle Class”.
Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2024
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First and foremost, kudos to the author for actually getting these high earners and inheritors to share their stories. It was interesting to read how they grappled with having wealth. And how some of them seem to pretend they were the middle class, by behaviors & morals. These folks didn’t want to be classified as “bad rich people”. But they sure aren’t the actual middle class. Real middle class people (in my opinion) aren’t high earners i.e: $250K annually and above. The real middle class can still sometimes have issues and concerns that people in poverty have. The real middle class still need to price check and budget monthly. And not just spend prudently for show…but because the resources are tight.

So what does it all mean? What does it matter if rich people behave themselves when it comes to lavish spending so they aren’t viewed as “bad rich people”?

To me, what’s important is that the real middle class is highlighted. Someone needs to bring to the forefront what it means to really be middle class. THAT will make sure there is no confusion on who and what the middle really looks like.

Everyone is so enamored with what it means to be rich or what it means to be poor. But no one cares to see what it means to be in the middle. The middle class means we may be close to poverty and/or close to being out of poverty, or depending on how life unfolds we may be more stable and closer to being slightly affluent. Every month can fluctuate which side we are on. Every change in the world affects which side we are closer to. The good rich or the bad rich don’t know what thats about. The good poor people or the bad poor people don’t know what that is about either because they are able to apply for handouts & hand ups.

Either way, I enjoyed the book. Thanks for writing this.
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Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars Necessary reading
Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2020
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Thorough account of how wealth is viewed today by high earners and how this view has shifted in the last thirty years. While it doesn’t really answer the questions it asks, is a fascinating anthropological study and I think I will reference it for years to come in relation to my own spending—why is all of it necessary? Why do we as a society feel guilty about wealth and don’t like how it shapes us and our children but are usually inclined to keep most of what we make and inherit? Why don’t we like some of the structures that benefit certain groups but also don’t really want these to change when we are the beneficiaries? So many incongruent behaviors, and the book really couldn’t come at a better time.
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Curtis
3.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating interviews; commentary less so
Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2017
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Uneasy Street is captivating reading for the seemingly endless thoughts, anecdotes, justifications, and philosophizing of New York's upper class. How people who have all the money in the world in the wealthiest country in history think about their privilege is something to behold, and I would recommend it to anyone.

Where the book falls short is with the author's constant commentary and re-casting of her subjects' outlooks on money, consumption, and hard work. At times it feels like she would prefer her wealthy interviewees flog themselves and plead for mercy for the sin of being in the top one percent. Hard work, intelligence, self-sacrifice--in the author's view, anyone who thinks they "got to where they are" because of these traits must have some sort of mental disease. In a way it's incredible to watch how the modern liberal mind associates success in this country with some sort of pathological condition.

One final note: virtually everyone interviewed in the book appears to be from New York or the surrounding suburbs. Could the author not find any rich people from Texas, Florida, Louisiana, or Oklahoma to interview? The reader can only assume the author believes rich people in New York are representative of rich people everywhere else.
49 people found this helpful
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CK
5.0 out of 5 stars Blew my mind
Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2022
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This book was an eye opener. It ticked me off and then, in the end, I felt pity. There are precious things in life that money cannot buy.
2 people found this helpful
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estudiante
4.0 out of 5 stars Lifestyles of the Rich and the Not-So-Famous
Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2017
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A book about rich couples (New Yorkers, at that) and their anxieties? Ho hum. Or so you might think, if you only read the comments section on the preview of this book, recently published in the New York Times. Rachel Sherman's book deserves a discerning read for people interested in the persistence of economic inequality in a society that thinks of itself as merit-driven and egalitarian. It also may be of interest to other members of the very social group that Sherman analyzes, if only to better understand themselves. And to understand inequality, we must understand those at all levels of society.

The book is composed of a series of interviews with and analyses of couples (with a noted focus on women) that are members of wealthy high-earning households, with one or both partners working in finance or similar careers and who have often inherited wealth. They often try to obscure their incredible wealth and privilege by trying to appear "normal"--they also try to retroactively justify their privilege by trying to be "morally worthy" of that privilege. This moral worth is obtained by "working hard, consuming prudently, and giving back" dulling the anxiety that comes with their wealth. In other words, they are not Kardashians, Trumps, or "real" housewives: gaudy, consumerist, entitled, and thus "bad". Instead this book's subjects are "good" rich people, and this fact for them seemingly justifies the structural inequality that allows them to live so well in a city of yawning inequalities. While Sherman clearly sees this as problematic, she does her best to reserve judgement.

The book is organized into six chapters, all based around the aforementioned interviews and supporting sociological literature: names like Thorstein Veblen, Pierre Bourdieu, Arlie Hochschild, Heraclio Bonilla-Silva as well as Susan Ostrander (who wrote a pioneering study on upper-class women of an earlier generation). Sherman notes that it is actually incredibly difficult to get the people she interviews to talk about money, and many had great reservations about participating in her project. As a result, this book is not an "ethnography" and lacks some of the depth and texture that such an account might have had. The resulting research design is still laudable and the product of great methodological finesse, yet readers who have read similar works recounting lived experiences of social class might not feel the same level of immersion. Yet the resulting analysis helps clarify a worldview that I suspect is common in other highly unequal cities across the country (though no doubt, with important regional differences). The first chapter focuses on upward or downward orientations: upward-oriented couples compare themselves to individuals wealthier than themselves tend to cast themselves as middle- or upper-middle class, while downward-oriented couples tend to recognize their privilege, though they still engage in practices and affects that try to justify their position. This orientation schematic struck me as something that could be situational as well, though Sherman suggests that it correlates with relative earning (high-earners are upward-oriented typically). The next three chapters highlight couples' attempts to show hard work, consume non-conspicuously, and give back in some way, through volunteering or charity. The final two chapters focus more on the domestic sphere, highlighting differences in household division of labor (often recreating gendered norms in heterosexual couples) and raising children--these parents also crave to be seen as normal by their children, while wanting them to be able to enjoy all the advantages of wealth, while also not becoming entitled. Supplementary interviews from service providers like interior designers--and though they are mentioned often, domestic workers like nannies and babysitters have little voice. An oversight perhaps inevitable given the approach, but the closer Sherman gets to the affluent, the more domestic workers literally and move to the background.

In a short recap and conclusion, Sherman argues that the judgement "good" and "bad" rich people is not very helpful--the "good" rich (not quite the 1% but certainly in the 2 to 5%) still practice and reproduce a "cultural logic of legitimate entitlement." The real response for those concerned with enduring inequality is to engage questions about "more egalitarian distribution of material and experiential resources"--easier said than done, as the author is no doubt well aware. But it would be a start. This book usefully shifts our focus away from the so-called immoral "bad rich" and hopefully moves us more towards the crux of the matter: inequality perpetrated in a capitalist society.

[About the Kindle edition: there are points during certain quotes where a letter is dropped before an ellipse. Kind of jarring at first, but you eventually realize that it's some kind of formatting error. Otherwise, glad that Kindle edition has page numbers and not just locations.]
18 people found this helpful
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Diego garrido escartin
5.0 out of 5 stars Interesante
Reviewed in Mexico on November 10, 2019
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Libro interesante
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Anonymous
5.0 out of 5 stars World's smallest violin
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 19, 2018
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A couple of years go I read a fascinating book called Portfolios of the Poor, in which extremely poor people were interviewed as they tried to exist on a few dollars, and some of them tried to save up to send their kids to a basic school, or to pay medical bills, with varying degrees of success. In Uneasy Street we move to the other end of the spectrum, and to the sounds of the world's smallest violin we hear about the stresses and strains of having so much money that our interviewees couldn't spend it all if they tried.

If you were a genius, you might say: "How about if the rich people in book 2 gave their money to the poor people in book 1". But as the author cleverly shows, even New York liberals will only go so far to try and salvage their consciences. Even if in the next room they have a maid working for peanuts doing the work they cannot be bothered to do, and being separated from their distant families while doing so. For all the grand words about how they don't wish to be part of the 1%, they will not do anything that would demote themselves down a level or two financially speaking.

So we become acquainted with terms like "luxury creep" (relentless increases in luxury expenditure as the spenders become used to it), with kids like the one who informs his parents for their next holiday they should fly private "like all the others" (ie in their own aeroplane), and with bored housewives whose idea of putting something back is volunteering at their kids' school.

Offering the maid $100,000 once she finishes, so she can go back to her home country with no more money worries? No chance.

This must have been an excruciatingly difficult survey to do - who likes inviting a stranger into their home and disclosing everything about their finances? The sample was quite limited, women in New York with wealth around $5-50m who feel bad about it. It would have been nice to have some in the sample who are more honest and don't even pretend to care, that just spend their days buying LV. I'd guess there plenty of them around if you look, judging by the LV sales figures. Also, I think the author could have disclosed her own exact financial status, so we could have seen what effect that might have.

All in all though this was a really interesting book, and I'd highly recommend it.
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Edoardo Demaio
3.0 out of 5 stars La ricchezza americana
Reviewed in Italy on October 31, 2017
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Il libro tratta, con una visione antropologica, delle abitudini dei c.d. ricchi (l'1%), di come essi si relazionano ad esso delle paure legate al denaro.
Il libro è di facile lettura (l'inglese utilizzato non l'ho trovato tecnico) anche se non sempre scorrevole.
Solitamente viene espresso un concetto e poi l'autore lo avvalora attraverso le interviste che ha fatto a vari benestanti di New York.
Per coloro che volessero ampliare la loro idea in merito alla ricchezza americana, tramite uno studio scientifico, ne consiglio l'acquisto.
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