The Official Filthy Rich Handbook [Hardcover]

Christopher Tennant (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 19, 2008

How the Other .0001% Live

It's looking like another banner year for America's moneyed over-class, the lucky .0001 percent sitting on $30 million-plus in liquid assets.

But sadly, most of the newcomers joining their ranks are simply not prepared to make the decisions that come with having it all. Unsure about everything—butler or majordomo? St. Tropez or St. Thomas?—they will blow their hard-earned billions on tacky houses, outrageous wardrobes, and outré diversions of various stripes. Because, while there are countless ways to make a fortune these days, there's still only one way to be Filthy Rich.

Fortunately, in the spirit of The Official Preppy Handbook—the 1.3-million-copy bestseller that taught all of us how to be WASPily top drawer—help has arrived. A dead-on, deadpan guide to living large in the land of plenty, The Official Filthy Rich Handbook yanks the monogrammed pashmina off a world few mortals ever get to see. Packed with insight and savvy, it brings this rarified universe to scandalous new life, feeding our endless fascination with the tastefully loaded, while offering practical instructions for those who dream of joining them.

In it, you'll learn not only where to live and what to wear, but about the things that really matter. How to hire a household staff. The right cosmetic surgery procedures for you...and your children. The proper way to name your houses. The sacred role of privet hedges. Why the Filthy Rich swim naked. The down-and-dirty on your fellow plutocrats (The Nerdling, The Raider, and the Grande Dame, to name a few). The moochers and scoundrels to know and avoid. How to buy a gigayacht. The right spots to party in Sardinia, Aspen, Nantucket, and St. Barts. The world's hottest tax havens. The four interior decorators worth waiting for. The Filthy Richest rehabs. Boarding schools of the rich and feckless. Why it's so hard to break into the art market and how to sound smart about Richard Serra. And much, much more. The rich "are different from you and me," F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote. Wait until you see the Filthy Rich.

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)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review

"Reading this handbook is like eating 12 baked Alaskas in a row, but Christopher Tennant seems to know la dolce vita Americana billionara, every sweet morsel of it."
—Tom Wolfe

"There are three kinds of humor. Parody, where you make fun of people who are smarter than you. Satire, where you make fun of people who are richer than you. And burlesque, where you do both while taking off your clothes. The Official Filthy Rich Handbook is a paragon of naked wit."
—P.J. O'Rourke

"I had a wonderful time reading The Official Filthy Rich Handbook. I learned a lot of things I didn't know, and chuckled at Christopher Tennant's extraordinary upper-class information."
—Dominick Dunne

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

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Workman Publishing Company; Deluxe edition (June 19, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0761148701
• ISBN-13: 978-0761148708
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,331,843 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Christopher Tennant has previously chronicled the foibles of the rich and infamous as an editor and writer at New York magazine, Talk, the New York Post's Page Six column, and Radaronline.com, the pop culture website he cofounded. A contributing editor at Vanity Fair, he lives beyond his means in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

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

By 

Julie Neal (Sanibel Island, Fla.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Official Filthy Rich Handbook (Paperback)

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

14 of 14 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 ""1004"" (Ile de France) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Official Filthy Rich Handbook (Paperback)

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.

53 of 64 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

This review is from: The Official Filthy Rich Handbook (Paperback)

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.