Palanpur: The Economy of an Indian Village Book

A well-written if underwhelming tour of the lives of America's gilded class. The book is dated for having been published over a decade ago and indeed right before the calamitous 2008 financial crisis. Frank doesn't engage the question of whether it is ethical or spiritually healthy for anyone to accumulate hundreds of millions of dollars in personal wealth or to own multiple colors of the same Rolls Royce Phantom. What he does illustrate though is just how many people like this there are (a lot) and the degree to which money itself feels like an illusory concept. Perhaps before 2008 it was still plausible to feel like there was anything remotely wholesome about this kind of accumulation, but I would volunteer that far fewer people would receive this book well today. The analysis is very journalistic, lots of scenes and quotes, but also light on big picture contextualizing. For that reason I would say its analytic value today is limited, although it is an easy read.