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The Winner-Take-All Society: Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More Than the
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The Winner-Take-All Society: Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More Than the Rest of Us Paperback - 1996

by Robert Frank; Philip J. Cook

Selected by Business Week as one of the 10 best business books of the year, this text is "a major contribution to the debate about the causes and consequences of inequality in America".--The New York Times Book Review.

Summary

Disney chairman Michael Eisner topped the 1993 Business Week chart of America's highest-paid executives, his $203 million in earnings roughly 10,000 times that of the lowest paid Disney employee.

During the last two decades, the top one percent of U.S. earners captured more than 40 percent of the country's total earnings growth, one of the largest shifts any society has endured without a revolution or military defeat. Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook argue that behind this shift lies the spread of "winner-take-all markets"—markets in which small differences in performance give rise to enormous differences in reward. Long familiar in sports and entertainment, this payoff pattern has increasingly permeated law, finance, fashion, publishing, and other fields. The result: in addition to the growing gap between rich and poor, we see important professions like teaching and engineering in aching need of more talent. This relentless emphasis on coming out on top—the best-selling book, the blockbuster film, the Super Bowl winner—has molded our discourse in ways that many find deeply troubling.

First line

Rabo Karabekian, the protagonist of Kurt Vonnegut's novel Bluebeard, is an abstract expressionist painter of modest renown ("a footnote in Art History," as he describes himself).

Details

  • Title The Winner-Take-All Society: Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More Than the Rest of Us
  • Author Robert Frank; Philip J. Cook
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition Reprint
  • Pages 288
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Penguin Publishing Group, London
  • Date September 1, 1996
  • Features Bibliography
  • ISBN 9780140259957 / 0140259953
  • Weight 0.61 lbs (0.28 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.42 x 5.56 x 0.65 in (21.39 x 14.12 x 1.65 cm)
  • Ages 18 to UP years
  • Grade levels 13 - UP
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 95-13340
  • Dewey Decimal Code 306.4

Media reviews

"A major contribution to the debate about causes and consequences of inequality in America"
The New York Times Book Review.

"Should be at the forefront of everyone's attention"
—Lester C. Thurow, Los Angeles Times

"Frank and Cook break new ground by linking the win-at-all costs mentality to economic and cultural problems."
Business Week

"A fun, informative, and provocative read"
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

Citations

  • New York Times, 09/01/1996, Page 24
  • Publishers Weekly, 07/22/1996, Page 0

About the author

Robert Frank is a senior special writer at The Wall Street Journal, where he writes a weekly column and daily blog called The Wealth Report. He has been with the Journal for 13 years, with postings in Atlanta, London, Singapore, and New York. He was part of a team of reporters that won an Overseas Press Club award in 1998 for its coverage of developing economies. He lives in New York with his wife and daughter.

Philip J. Cook studied econometrics at the University of Michigan and the University of California, Berkeley. An author and educator, he has taught at Duke University for 40 years and authored several books, including The Winner-Take-All Society with Robert H. Frank, and The Gun Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know with Kristin A. Goss.

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