This book was an interesting commentary on the one percent in America, and did little to endear me to this group. It spent a lot of time going into detail about the privileges the author enjoyed from a young age, but I couldn’t really tell what the book’s purpose was beyond that. It seemed as though he was trying to present himself as a reformed one-percenter that is critical of the experiences he’d had at his elite schools. However, it never really got to that and came across as more a collection of stories about his past. I hoped that McDonell would draw some kind of conclusion from the interviews with his classmates that were included, but they were just kind of out there and left.

Overall, I thought that it was interesting to get a look into the experiences of this elite group, but I wish there had been a bit more depth to the story.