The American Ruling Class

The world's first dramatic-documentary-musical satire explores our country's most taboo topic: class, the presence of an elite in our nominally democratic republic. Harper's Magazine editor Lewis Lapham takes two young Ivy-League graduates on a tour of the corridors of power and their own career possibilities. Along the way they meet an all-star cast, including, among many others, former cabinet secretaries (James Baker) corporate mandarins (Peter G. Peterson) newspaper publishers (Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr.) and at least one journalist working as a waitress (Barbara Ehrenreich). By story's end, the graduates' choice of career takes on great weight: will they try to save the world, or rule it?