The 9.9 Percent

“Brilliant… . Stewart is both cartographer and critic, serving as a kind of appalled anthropologist… . What gives the book its relentlessly sharp edge is his exposure of so much conventional wisdom as ultimately self-serving and deluded.” – Nick Romeo * Washington Post *“Matthew Stewart’s new book is a captivating account of how America got into our current plight of extreme inequality and why that should concern all of us—especially those of us in the top 9.9 percent. It closes with some suggestions about what we might do about it, which alone should make the book must reading in the Biden White House.” – Robert D. Putnam, author of Bowling Alone and Our Kids“In contemporary America, the lives of the wealthy bear increasingly little resemblance to those of working-class people, much less to those who are poor. Stewart is surely right to view this as a problem and to question why it has generated so much less outrage and concern than the obscene fortunes of the superrich.” – Eyal Press * The New York Times *“A charged study of the second-tier wealthy in America, the principal engine of inequality… . A sharp-tongued, altogether readable, and welcome assault on unrestrained wealth.” – Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“The 9.9 Percent is a bracing and necessary read. Matthew Stewart does not pull his punches, making clear that the inequality and social stagnation plaguing the United States cannot be blamed on the billionaires. The ideology of meritocracy has been perverted to support a growing aristocracy, even as many of us passionately profess our commitment to universal equal opportunity. Highly recommended.” – Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO, New America”[A] withering assessment of the overweighted, nearly intractable socioeconomic power of [the] 9.9 percent—all conveyed with an acid humor that recalls the late social critics Henry Fairlie and Paul Fussell.” * Booklist (starred review) *“In The 9.9 Percent, Matthew Stewart studies … the social class just below the new millennial robber barons—the overcompensated, self-regarding, yet terminally anxious cohort of the merely extravagantly privileged… . [a] clear-eyed and incisive study.” – Chris Lehmann * The New Republic *

Matthew Stewart is an independent philosopher and historian who has written extensively about the philosophical origins of the American republic and the history of management. With degrees from Princeton University and Oxford University and a stint as a management consultant, he was once a respectable member of the 9.9%. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review, among other publications. He lives near Boston, Massachusetts.

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