America's Secret Aristocracy: The Families That Built the United States

America has always been a constitutionally classless society, yet an American aristocracy emerged anyway—a private club whose members run in the same circles and observe the same unwritten rules. Renowned social historian Stephen Birmingham reveals the inner workings of this aristocracy and identifies which families in which cities have always mattered and how they’ve defined America.

America’s Secret Aristocracy offers an inside look at the estates, marriages and financial empires of Americ...