Aristocracy, American Style: Class Privilege and the Persistence of Elite Power

A New York Times Most Anticipated Nonfiction Book of 2026

“Sharp and provocative from beginning to end, Aristocracy, American Style is certain to spark debate in the age of the billionaire president.” —T. J. Stiles, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt and Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America

A leading historian confronts the myth of American meritocracy and our enduring reverence for the uber-rich—and reveals how the worship of wealth corrodes democracy

Americans are taught to see aristocracy as everything we are not. Yet from the Revolution forward, the nation has cultivated elites in all but name—dynasties of wealth, pedigree, and corporate power—while praising them as proof the system works. In Aristocracy, American Style, bestselling historian Nancy Isenberg shows that the feel-good myths of the self-made man and “opportunity for all” have not simply distracted us; they have supplied a lasting logic that launders privilege across generations.

Drawing on public policy, popular culture, and political rhetoric, Isenberg exposes the rituals and reinventions that have long protected the most privileged among us. Ranging from Gilded Age robber barons to modern moguls and influencers, from Brahmins to nepo babies, she demonstrates how American elites have long borrowed aristocratic forms—crests reborn as logos, courts reborn as corporate suites, noblesse oblige reborn as naming rights—while media infrastructures keep us awed by scandal and celebrity churn. What emerges is a map of American power hiding in plain sight.

From the racetracks and jockey clubs of early America to the halls of the Ivy League and the red carpets of Hollywood, Aristocracy, American Style reframes today’s inequality as the predictable outcome of an old, distinctly American regime: one that thrives under democratic slogans while narrowing democratic possibility and teaching a republic to mistake prestige for merit.