Synopses & Reviews
Tad Friend's family is nothing if not illustrious: his father was president of Swarthmore College, and at Smith his mother came in second in a poetry contest judged by W.H. Auden--to Sylvia Plath.
Review
"Cheerful Money is side-splittingly funny and touching, without being the least predictable. It has the verve of Nick and Nora Charles with their silver martini shakers, and some insights mournful as Kafka's. This will become a classic."--Mary Karr, author of Lit and The Liars' Club
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"In Tad Friend's stunning memoir about the lost world of the Wasp elite, the Hamptons' Georgica Pond comes to seem as Edenic as
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"Cheerful Money, by a self-stinging Wasp, is sharp as well as blunt about this problematic caste, but also rather proud of its salty aspects.
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"[A] splendid book....
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"Mr. Friend has written an elegiac family history-cum-cultural taxonomy of a declining empire."--Wall Street Journal
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"Friend's talents are well suited to his material....
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"Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor is taxonomy-as-memoir, an absolutely brilliant gift to the reader, wherein Friend essentially holds open the door to the exclusive club."--The Oregonian
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"Friend's memoir, called "Cheerful Money," is a droll, psychologically astute and sometimes nostalgic look backward at the WASP world that was....
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"American Wasps are now as rare as black truffles, and rarely has their story been told so candidly or entertainingly as it is in Tad Friend's wonderful new memoir, Cheerful Money....
Synopsis
Part memoir, part family history, and part sociological study of the WASP world, "Cheerful Money" is a captivating examination of a cultural crack-up and a man trying to escape its wreckage. photo insert.
Synopsis
As a young man, Friend noticed that his illustrious family tree was full of alcoholics, depressives, and reckless eccentrics. Part memoir, part family history, and part cultural study, "Cheerful Money" offers a captivating examination of the rise and fall of the American WASP world.
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About the Author
Tad Friend is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he writes the magazine's "Letter from California." Prior to that, he wrote regularly for Outside, New York, and Esquire, and wrote travel stories from all seven continents. He plays golf and squash and watches a lot of television. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Amanda Hesser, and their children, Walker and Addie.