The Official Filthy Rich Handbook (Paperback)

by Christopher Tennant (Author)
Key Phrases: New York, Palm Beach, Los Angeles (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Those top-drawer trendies from the 1980 Official Preppy Handbook have grown older and richer; it's time now to tweak the lifestyles of the über-rich, people Tennant, one-time columnist for the New York Post's Page Six gossip column and cofounder of Radar magazine, knows well. Tennant opens with a plutocrat primer, a sketchbook detailing various Filthy Rich types, from hedgers to heirheads. Chapters follow on where to buy homes and how to hire staff, especially that jewelry handler who carries illicit substances for high-echelon rappers. Vacations are another big issue, involving whole new wardrobes and leisure activities. Sports are great for conspicuous consumption of time and money; the most desirable sports, like fly fishing, big-game hunting or polo, can involve special vacations of their own. Even simple sports like golf require joining the right club; Tennant's matter-of-fact listing of the clubs' discriminatory barriers speaks for itself. Then, since to heir is divine, there's a chapter on having children—which boils down to buying the most exclusive baby buggy, hiring the least marriage-threatening nanny and picking the most ego-satisfying boarding school. Jazzy page layouts and endless name-dropping make for a great tongue-in-cheek humor book. (June)
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Review
"[A] decadent road map to help you navigate through private-school admissions, choppy regatta waters, and the global social circuit." — Vanity Fair (Vanity Fair )

[A] decadent road map to help you navigate through private-school admissions, choppy regatta waters, and the global social circuit. Vanity Fair (Vanity Fair )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 247 pages
• Publisher: Workman Publishing Company (June 19, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0761147039
• ISBN-13: 978-0761147039
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #4,614 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lifestyles of the rich and shallow, June 23, 2008

By	Julie Neal "The Complete Walt Disney World" (Sanibel Island, Fla.) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I enjoyed this silly handbook about the über rich. Reading it, I never laughed out loud but did smile. I also learned some interesting trivia, such as the fact that actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus' father has an estimated $3.4 billion fortune. Get out!

The book opens with the Plutocrat Primer, a welcome to the newly wealthy. A field guide to the filthy rich diagrams some common types, such as The Wastrel, The Nerdling, The Impresario and The Heirhead, whose patron saint is Paris Hilton.

Some sections seem like an actual handbook, though, and aren't funny. A five-page Members Only segment lists and describes actual country clubs by such categories as how long the wait list is to join, and who some of the famous members are. Each chapter has a directory with contact information on actual businesses that cater to wealthy customers. Did you know you can buy Almas caviar that comes from a 100-year-old beluga sturgeon for $25,000 a tin from the Caviar House in London? I didn't, and didn't care.

Far better are the acidly cynical segments that skewer the shallow rich, such as the piece about plastic surgery called "Daddy, I Hate My Nose!" Another piece teaches you what to say for your cover story after liposuction makes it appear you've lost a ton of post-childbirth weight: "It's so true what they say. Breast-feeding torches the calories!"

Here's the chapter list:

1. The Plutocrat Primer: Meet your new friends
2. Where to Live: Homing patterns
3. It Takes a Village: The art of staffing up
4. Buying a Better You: Looking the part
5. The Social Whirl: Out & about
6. Travel & Leisure: Summer is a verb
7. Float Some & Jet Some: Tycoons on the move
8. Playgrounds & Pastimes: Get a hobby
9. To Heir is Divine: Billionaire breeding habits
10. Afflictions & Pretensions: Surviving at the top

27 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Witty dissection of a subculture, July 3, 2008

By	Dale Hrabi (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

If, like me, you find the immoderately rich kinda fascinating in their loathsomeness--think Goldie Hawn in the guilty-pleasure movie, Overboard--this book will totally feed that fascination. It's also quite impressive as a tour de force of McSweeney's-esque chartiness.

It reminds me of the time I visited a college friend in Ohio and quickly realized she'd failed to warn me she was filthy rich. Her grandmother's "cottage" turned out to be a sprawling turn-of-the-century home with a vast formal English Rose Garden and a daunting assortment of cutlery (each piece intended for some insanely specific purpose...I remember they had a fork specifically for duck.) The whole trip was a nightmare and I ruined an entire set of "heirloom sheets" with ink from a cheap, crappy Bic pen while documenting the family's alien qualities in my journal.

Had I been equipped with this comprehensive book, things might have gone a lot better.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars lifestyles of the journalists of the rich and famous, December 8, 2008

By	Bachelier "Husband, Father, Catholic, Finance... (Ile de France) - See all my reviews

Mostly a journalist's catalogue of actual things billionaires have done and a diary of their haunts. Structure is straight out of "The Preppy Handbook" and "The MBA Handbook" so it is a familiar page-turner. Nice reference for aspiring novelists who need detail for the billionaire lifestyle, although G--gle Maps is probably the next best reference after this. Not exactly "har-har" funny, more droll. The index is great, although it lists "Peter Luger Steaks" under "Peter." Tennant cleverly avoids "the Russians" for most of the book, probably in a nice life-saving mode, so there is a bit of tiptoeing around and you need to read between the lines some.