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The Haves and Have-Yachts

Dispatches on the Ultrarich

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The Haves and Have-Yachts

By: Evan Osnos
Narrated by: Evan Osnos
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About this listen

*** THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ***

‘An eye-opening account of superyachts, the billionaires who buy them, and what it all means for the rest of us … [a] droll and timely analysis of extreme wealth’ – ​Guardian


Who are America's oligarchs? What do they want? How do they operate? Is there anything that can be done to contain their power?

The ultrarich hold more of America’s wealth than they did in the heyday of the Carnegies and Rockefellers. In this incisive and provocative book, Evan Osnos offers an unforgettable portrait of the tactics and obsessions driving this new Gilded Age, in which superyachts, luxury bunkers, elite tax dodges and a torrent of political donations bespeak staggering disparities of wealth and power.

With deft storytelling and meticulous reporting, Osnos explores the indulgences, incentives and psychological distortions that define our time. He delves into the unprecedented influence Silicon Valley and Wall Street have on government, drawing on in-depth interviews with Mark Zuckerberg and other billionaires. He also exposes the hidden world of the ultrarich in all its outrageous, fabulous, ridiculous detail: a private wealth manager who broke with members of an American dynasty and spilled their secrets; the pop stars who perform at lavish parties for thirteen-year-olds; the status anxieties that spill out of marinas in Monaco and Palm Beach like real-world episodes of Succession and The White Lotus.

Originally published in the New Yorker, these essays have been revised and expanded to deliver an unflinching portrait of the rise of America’s modern oligarchy. Osnos’s essays are a wake-up call – a case against complacency in the face of unchecked excess, as the choices of the ultrarich ripple through our lives. Entertaining, unsettling and eye-opening, The Haves and Have-Yachts couldn’t be more relevant to today’s world.
©2025 Evan Osnos (P)2025 Simon & Schuster, UK
Political Science Politics & Government Social Classes & Economic Disparity Sociology Gilded Age Taxation

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Critic reviews

'A beautifully written and often amusing climb to the very top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs' (Rana Foroohar)
'Revelatory' (Rosemary Goring)
'The Gilded Age had Mark Twain, the Jazz Age had F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the Age of Trump, luckily, has Evan Osnos. In The Haves and the Have-Yachts, Osnos reveals the secret lives and preoccupations of America’s increasingly powerful oligarchs and probes their outsized impact on the rest of us. Osnos is an astute political reporter and a wonderful and witty stylist, making this menagerie of modern-day Robber Barons equal parts entertaining and appalling. Anyone trying to understand who really rules Trump’s America must read it.' (Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money)
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