**The landmark book that changed the way exceptional families think
about their heritage, their wealth, and their legacy to future
generations--now revised and expanded.
**Every family, looking at the next generation, hopes to confer
advantages that are more than just material and financial--to inculcate
character and leadership, to inspire creativity and enterprise, to help
all family members find and follow their individual callings, and to
avoid the financial dependency and loss of initiative that can all too
often be an unwanted consequence of financial success. Yet many families
never succeed in realizing that vision, much less sustaining it for
three, four, or five generations and beyond.
James Hughes has thought deeply about these challenges, and his insights
are at once practical and profound. For more than three decades, he has
personally guided multiple generations of families in creating
strategies to preserve their human and intellectual capital as well as
their financial assets. His teachings synthesize insights from
psychology, anthropology, political history, philosophy, economic
theory, and the law, with examples ranging from Aristotle to
cutting-edge social science theory. His ideas have been taken up by
numerous exceptional families, by their advisers, and by scores of
authors, practitioners, and academics who have found value in the
methods he pioneered.
The first edition of this book, privately published, became a
word-of-mouth classic. Now, Hughes has updated and substantially
expanded it with new chapters that challenge conventional notions of
wealth and offer guidelines for conserving family assets in the broadest
senses. Filled with tested principles and practices for family
governance and joint decision making, it is a rich source of workable
wisdom that family members can put into practice today, to the enduring
benefit and gratitude of future generations.
