Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires

Junot Diaz is a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is very widely known for this writing and his background story. In Junot Diaz’s story, “The Money: Starting Out,” he shares a story from his childhood. The story is about when Diaz and his family had just recently moved to New Jersey from Santo Domingo and they felt as if they were “targeted.” The neighborhood that they were living in was not the top of the line, lots of robberies were taking place. The Diazs’ themselves are a victim of robbery, but in the end, everything turns out to be good. Throughout Diaz’s story the reader can better understand and sympathize with this family because of the many uses of pathos and ethos in the passage.

“Money talks” is an expression many form as a simple analogy to the problem associated with wealth today. However, the value of money is not to be taken in vain as money does not always showcase the attributes of knowledge and power. At the same time, those who do possess money do, in some cases, possess the attributes commonly associated with the wealthier class. “Money and Class in America” wrote by Lewis Lapham in 1988, showcases the pessimistic feelings Lapham has towards the American faith in money. Lapham believes that Americans are at a loss to hold the majesty of money at bay. Though I agree with Lapham to a point, I also believe that the assumptions of Americans do apply to a point.

The book Amusing the Million was written by John F. Kasson. Kasson is a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He teaches Emeritus of History and American Studies. He got his AB at Harvard University in 1966 and his PhD at Yale University in 1971. Kasson has several publications such as; Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century (1978), Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America (1990), Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republican Values in America, 1776 – 1900 (1999), Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America (2001), and The Little Girl who Fought the Great Depression: Shirley Temple and the 1930s America (2014). Amusing the Million examines the historical context in which Coney Island made its reputation as an amusement park and shows how America’s changing social and economic conditions formed the basis of a new mass culture.

Industrialist Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland in November of 1835 to a family of handloom weavers, a group hit remarkably hard by the mechanization of the textile industry. Abandoning the minimal expectations and the now almost invaluable job of weaving in the Scottish industrial cities, Carnegie's family emigrated to the United States in 1848. After years of work and experience in the expansion of the steel industry, Carnegie obtained a general logic of arguments about labor to the broader realm of social relation, giving specific attention to the role of private upper-class wealth in a democratic society.

If Tyler Durden from Fight Club was sitting inside $340,000 Lamborghini Aventador, his hatred towards materialism probably would have driven him to accelerate the car right into the ocean. If James Twitchell was sitting inside of it, he probably would have just left the car in a parking structure with the keys still inside. Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club and James Twitchell’s essay “The Allure of Luxury”both take negative against the concept and phenomenon of Western materialism, where society indulge on luxurious items to the extent of being the focus of life. In Fight Club, the idea of anti-materialism is taken to a great extent, with the book’s main character and Tyler focusing on destroying the materialistic society with violence to restore a more primitive way of living. However, in Twitchell’s piece, materialism is taken more moderately, describing how materialism has rapidly expanded throughout the Western nations, questioning the if it is beneficial or malicious. I believe that materialism does provide great benefits that allowed us human beings to advance as a society. However materialism introduces numerous complications that impact our society on a macroscale. Before comparing and contrasting my view of materialism, we will first explore Twitchell’s essay, then Fight Club to first better understand their stance and concept of materialism.

Robber Barons such as John Davison Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie were a large part of the propelling force that led the United States into a new frontier, setting the standard for the American dream. These men were known for their ingenuity, intuition, and innovation as business men. Each setting a high standard in their field, these men set out to accomplish greatness by revolutionizing their industry. They were known in history as the first men to become giants of the industrialized world, they created a new ear, and with it legacies that have lasted centuries.

Wealth is something that not all people have, but most typically want more of it. There are many people on Earth that wish they had more wealth, and there are even a select few that have too much. “The Gospel of Wealth” by Andrew Carnegie is all about what should be done when there is too much wealth held by an individual. Carnegie begins his essay by describing how the disparity of wealth has changed over the years. He also describes how wealth has simply grown in general over time.

Words in the English language can have numerous definitions and connotations; the term rich is no different than the rest. The first definition most people think of when they hear the word "rich" is having loads of money, which is exactly what Pete has in “The Rich Brother” by Tobias Wolff. This definition of rich and the title of the story lead many readers to assume that Pete is rich and his brother Donald is poor, but this is not necessarily the case. A person can also be rich because they supply a large amount of something that is needed, such as love or forgiveness. After further analysis and a different view of the definition of “rich,” it is discovered that Donald is in fact, the rich brother, not the monetarily rich Pete.

In the article entitled “A Generation Struggling: Rich Kids are Losing,” Dr. Brian Carr asserts that children of wealthy Americans demonstrate problems adjusting to society as adults. First, Carr points out class differences rich and the poor teens in substance abuse and types of crime. The author explains that the rich also have problems and that they have a higher rate of delinquency.

In the article entitled “A Generation Struggling: Rich Kids are Losing” by Dr. Brian Carr, the main topic is about rich kids and how the lack of parental supervision and the stress to find a good well-paying job causes children of wealthy parents to be more likely to engage in criminal acts. First, Dr. Carr writes that while children of minorities are believed to be more likely to become criminals, similar problems are also happening to children of rich families. The author also states that since the parents of rich children usually leave their children to their own devices, it causes them to never have a set of rules to follow, leaving them to not know right from wrong. In addition, he points out that during their early years, they don’t worry

Do you judge people based on looks, and appearance or on their actual lives? Most people like me, come to a conclusion right away, when you see a person, and judge them based on first appearance, and then you automatically have expectation from that person. But looks can be deceiving. One example that fits in this category is distinguishing between the “rich” and the actual people who have wealth. Thomas J. Stanley in his book called “The Millionaire Next Door” discusses in length how rich people act versus the “show-offs”. The key to becoming rich starts with you how you are disciplined in your behavior towards spending, and knowing the difference between what you “need” and what you ‘want”, as well as making other smart financial decisions.

In the book “All Money in the World” by Laura Vanderkam discusses about ways that people get and spend money in their lives and the relative between money and happiness. Each title, the author shows us different ways to use and earn money like getting, spending and sharing. But in chapter 3, “Rethink Retirement” of getting, Laura Vanderkam shows the creative way to approach retirement. There are three of the ways that the author suggests people can rethink and plan for retirement such as saving, making extra, and using time efficiently.

After watching the movie The Social Network, the first thing I did was to search for Mark Zuckerberg’s real life experiences to see which parts are facts and which are fictions. As a matter of fact, this Harvard genius that founded the world’s first social network was not as childish as the movie portrayed. At least he didn’t write programming for getting into elite Harvard “Final Clubs” or for retaliating his girlfriend. During Mark’s high school, Microsoft and AOL tried to purchase the music player that he built and also invited him to join them. However, Mark decided to enroll in Harvard for further education. From where I stand, although the movie is fictional, it can easily

Selfishness is defined as the stinginess resulting from a concern of your own welfare and the disregard of others. Selfishness, once passing a certain level, is seen as a character flaw by many people. Where does selfishness come from? Is it a trait in which as humans we pick up over time, or is it an animalistic trait in which we are born with and have no control over? Author Mark Sundeen tells us the story of Daniel Suelo, in the book The Man Who Quit Money. Daniel Suelo was a mid-aged man, who decided to drop everything and live on his own without the use of money; he would no longer live the typical American lifestyle and survive strictly on the kindness of others and the leftovers he could find in dumpsters.

“The biggest risk you can take, is to take no risk” is a wise quote from Mark Zuckerberg, a man who is definitely is a strong abider of his very words. But what makes this man such a risk taker? This man, Mark Zuckerberg, created Synapse, is the founder of the Facebook era, and is the world’s youngest billionare.He is a high school programing prodigy and a software developing genius. Mark’s most famous accomplishment, Facebook, is the world’s largest social networking site. Heard of it? Good or Bad? Member or not? You have most likely encountered talk of this phenomenon. Is it a phase or an addiction? A help or a hindrance? Whatever it is, Mark’s accomplishments updated his and our statuses permanently .