The Rise of the New Gilded Age

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New York in the Gilded Age

In 1897, a society matron named Cornelia Martin threw a lavish ball at the Waldorf Hotel in New York. The creme de la creme of society showed up, including John Jacob Astor and J.P. Morgan along with their wives, who were decked out in hundreds of thousands of dollars of glittering jewels. 

 But, as Chrystia Freeland writes in her book, Plutocrats, the opulence of the Gilded Age ball turned out to be over the top - even for a city used to opulence. And the Martins soon felt they needed to leave the country, seeking sanctuary in their English house and their rented 65,000-acre estate in Scotland.Freeland argues that today we are living through the rise of another Gilded Age, one the might be better hidden from us but that represents a sort of abundance most of us can't quite imagine. Kara Miller talks with Freeland on Boston Public Radio. 

 GUEST:

• Chrystia Freeland: digital editor at Thompson Reuters, author of Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else