Books like Families of fortune by Alexis Gregory

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece examines the glittering yet hollow glamour of the Roaring Twenties as the enigmatic Jay Gatsby pursues love, wealth, and identity across the social divide.

In wintry Starkfield, Massachusetts, disabled farmer Ethan Frome is trapped in a loveless marriage to Zeena while his unrequited love for Zeena’s cousin Mattie drives a desperate, tragic triangle that culminates in a failed attempt to escape together.

In Edith Wharton’s classic, Lily Bart, a beautiful and intelligent young woman devoted to luxury, struggles to navigate New York’s strict social hierarchy and moral expectations, ultimately confronting the limits of her independence.

A glittering family drama where riches split a household, an ex‑wife’s jealous schemes sabotage couture, and an Asian heir struggles to claim a vast inheritance.

A biting satire that exposes post‑Civil War America’s political corruption, city life, and speculative greed through Twain’s wry commentary on legislators, businessmen, and urban excess.

The cake in kitchen, the house in the suburbs, Mamie in her mink stole, Elvis in his pink Cadillac. It was America in the 1950s, and the world was not so much a stage as a setpiece for TV, the new national phenomenon. It was a time when how things looked - and how we looked - mattered, a decade of design that comes to vibrant life in As Seen on TV. This book captures a visual culture reflecting and reflected in the powerful new medium of television. Looking closely at a number of celebrated instances in which the principles of design dominated the public arena and captivated the popular imagination, Karal Ann Marling gives us a vivid picture of the taste and sensibility of the postwar era. From Walt Disney's Wednesday night TV show, the leap was easy to his theme park, where the wildly popular TV characters could be seen firsthand, and Marling conducts us through this heady concoction of real life and fantasy. Next she takes us into the picture-perfect world of Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book of 1950, the runaway bestseller of the decade, and shows us how the look of food, culminating in the TV Dinner, attained paramount importance. From the painting-by-numbers fad to the public fascination with the First Lady's apparel to the television sensation of Elvis Presley to the sculptural refinement of the automobile, Marling explores what Americans saw and what they looked for with a gaze newly trained by TV. A study in style, in material culture, in art history at eye level, her book shows us as never before those artful everyday objects that stood for American life in the 1950s, as seen on TV.

"The 1920s and 1930s saw dramatic changes in the American population, as increasing urbanization, innovations in technology, cultural upheaval, and economic disaster exerted major influences on the daily lives of ordinary people. Explore how everyday living changed during these years when use of automobiles and home electrification first became commonplace, when radio emerged, and when cinema, with the addition of sound, became broadly popular. Find out how work life, domestic life, and leisure-time activities were affected by these factors as well as by the politics of the time. Details of matters such as the creation of the pickup truck, the development of radio programming, and the first mass use of cosmetics provide an enjoyable read that brings the era of "The Roaring Twenties" and "The Great Depression" clearly into focus."--BOOK JACKET.

"It used to be pretty easy to distinguish between the bourgeois world of capitalism and the bohemian counterculture. The bourgeois worked for corporations, wore gray, and went to church. The bohemians were artists and intellectuals. Bohemians championed the values of the liberated 1960s; the bourgeois were the enterprising yuppies of the 1980s.". "But now the bohemian and the bourgeois are all mixed up, as David Brooks explains in this description of upscale culture in America. It is hard to tell an espresso-sipping professor from a cappuccino-gulping banker. Laugh and sob as you read about the information age economy's new dominant class. Marvel at their attitudes toward morality, sex, work, and lifestyle, and at how the members of this new elite have combined the values of the counter-cultural sixties with those of the achieving eighties. These are the people who set the tone for society today, for you. They are bourgeois bohemians: Bobos." "Their hybrid culture is the atmosphere we breathe. Their status codes govern social life, and their moral codes govern ethics and influence our politics. Bobos in Paradise is a witty and serious look at the cultural consequences of the information age and a penetrating description of how we live now."--BOOK JACKET.

Charles Dickens’s 1841–42 American journey, as recorded in "American Notes," chronicles his travels from the eastern seaboard through the Great Lakes states, offering his observations on slavery, customs, and the social life of the United States.

Peter Gay’s "Schnitzler's Century" explores how the rise of the modern middle class shaped 19th‑century Europe, using Arthur Schnitzler as a lens to re‑examine social mores, science, and cultural shifts.

Explore daily life in medieval Europe through vivid, documentary-rich portraits of village, castle, monastery, and town life, revealing diet, fashion, work, and social customs. This accessible history illuminates the everyday realities of the Middle Ages.

A scholarly exploration of the English country house from the Middle Ages to modern times, examining its architectural evolution, social significance, and cultural impact on Britain's upper classes.

A practical guide to building and maintaining multigenerational wealth from bestselling author Bill Bonner.