A bold and moving exploration of the American elite that exposes how
the ruling class--even when well-intentioned--perpetuates cycles of
wealth, power, and injustice
Growing up on New York City's Upper East Side, Nick McDonell was
surrounded by luxury--sailing lessons in the Hamptons, school galas at
the Met, and holidays on private jets. It was this rarified life that he
explored in his early novels, but then left behind as a war
correspondent in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In Quiet Street, McDonell returns to the sidewalks of his youth,
exhuming his own upbringing, and those of his wealthy peers, with
bracing honesty. Through summer safaris and winter ski trips, ill-omened
handshakes and schoolyard microaggressions, fox-hunting rituals and
sexually precocious tweens, McDonell examines the ruling class in
painstaking detail, documenting how wealth and power are hoarded,
encoded, and passed down from one generation to the next. Crucially, he
also demonstrates how outsiders--the poor, the non-white, the
suburban--are kept in the dark.
Searing and precise yet always deeply human, Quiet Street examines the
problem of America's one-percenters, whose vision of a more just world
never materializes. Who are these people, how do they hold on to power,
and what would it take for them to share it? Quiet Street pursues
these questions through the highly personal, but universal, experience
of growing up and coming to terms with the culture that made you.
