*Starred Review* Even Alan Greenspan is worried about the troubling trend of income inequality. International financial reporter Freeland looks beyond worries about the 1 percent to the even more troubling trend of the 0.1 percent of the world's most wealthy having more in common with each other than their countrymen and acting on those interests, guaranteeing even more inequality. Is the gap between the superrich and everybody else the product of impersonal market forces or political machinations? Freeland offers an engaging and deeply analytical look at the history, politics, and economics behind the rise of the plutocrats. She draws parallels between current inequality and the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, when the top 1 percent of the U.S. population held one-third of the national income. Globalization and the technology revolution are the major factors behind what she sees as new and overlapping gilded ages: the second for the U.S., the first for developing nations. Drawing on interviews with economists and the elite themselves, Freeland chronicles lavish parties, hubris, and hand-wringing over the direction of the global economy. As she laments, The feedback loop between money, politics, and ideas is both cause and consequence of the rise of the super-elite. Readers will appreciate the broader political and economic implications of Freeland's penetrating examination of growing global income inequality.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2010 Booklist

Without ever specifically defining the term plutocrat, financial journalist Freeland (editor, Thomson Reuters Digital; Sale of a Century: The Inside Story of the Second Russian Revolution) wastes no time in making clear that she refers to people who represent the top one percent of the economy. This book uses the super-rich as a way to understand the world economy, and Freeland condemns neither plutocrats nor the capitalist system that created them. Instead, she seeks to place them within a global context. Using numerous interviews and meetings with, as well as numerous journalistic sources about, the super-elite, she shows how this group has changed over time, how the gap between the one and the 99 percent has grown wider, and how plutocrats often use their political muscle to enlarge their share of the pie and close off opportunities for average Americans to reach the same level of wealth. Freeland explores the concepts of rent seeking, cognitive capture, and philanthro-capitalism, all the while sounding a warning about the difference between earned and inherited wealth. VERDICT Recommended for those who want a readable explanation of the economic and political differences between the super-rich and the rest of us.-Bonnie Tollefson, Cleveland Bradley Cty. P.L., Cleveland, TN (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.