Country of Lords - Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight Against Equality in America

By: Kim Phillips-fein

Published by W. W. Norton, Incorporated, 2026-07-21

We think of the United States as a nation committed, at least on paper, to ideals of human equality, under God and/or under the law. But as robust as the notion of the "American dream" is a longstanding defense of social hierarchies, including vast gulfs between rich and poor.

Drawing on forgotten characters and neglected archives, Kim Phillips-Fein tells the story of the executives, intellectuals, and political leaders who have argued that the words of the Declaration of Independence--that "all men are created equal"--are a myth. John Adams, William Graham Sumner, Andrew Carnegie, journalist Lothrop Stoddard, Henry Ford, Harvard psychologist Richard Herrnstein, Peter Thiel, and others represent this counter-tradition of hostility to democratic government. Phillips-Fein explores their ideas, and the aspirations they were reacting to, in order to understand our political life today--in hopes we might imagine a more egalitarian way forward.