Chuck Thompson

How did rescue dogs become status symbols? Why are luxury brands losing their cachet? What's made F. Scott Fitzgerald's most famous observations obsolete? The answers are part of a new revolution that's radically reorganizing the way we view ourselves and others that "will be hard for pop-culture readers to put down" (Booklist).Status was once easy to identify--fast cars, fancy shoes, sprawling estates, elite brands. But in place of Louboutin's and Lamborghinis, the relevance of the rich, famous, and gauche is waning and a riveting revolution is underfoot. Chuck Thompson--dubbed "savagely funny" by The New York Times and "wickedly entertaining" by the San Francisco Chronicle--sets out to determine what "status" means today and learns that what was once considered the low life has become the high life. In Status Revolution, Thompson tours the new world of status from a small community in British Columbia where an indigenous artist uses wood carving to restore communal status; to a Washington, DC, meeting of the "Patriotic Millionaires," a club of high-earners who are begging the government to tax them; to a luxury auto factory in the south of Italy where making beautiful cars is as much about bringing dignity to a low-earning region than it is about flash and indulgence; to a London lab where the neural secrets of status are being unlocked. "Chock-full of shocking revelations" (In Touch Weekly) and with his signature wit and irreverence, Thompson explains why everything we know about status is changing, upends centuries of conventional wisdom, and shows how the new status revolution reflects our place in contemporary society.

How did rescue dogs become status symbols? Why are luxury brands losing their cachet? What's made F. Scott Fitzgerald's most famous observations obsolete? The answers are part of a new revolution that's radically reorganizing the way we view ourselves and others, that "will be hard for pop-culture readers to put down" (Booklist). Status was once easy to identify--fast cars, fancy shoes, sprawling estates, elite brands. But in place of Louboutins and Lamborghinis, the relevance of the rich, famous, and gauche is waning and a riveting revolution is underfoot. Chuck Thompson--dubbed "savagely funny" by The New York Times and "wickedly entertaining" by the San Francisco Chronicle--sets out to determine what "status" means today and learns that what was once considered the low life has become the high life. In The Status Revolution, Thompson tours the new world of status from a small community in British Columbia where an indigenous artist uses wood carving to restore communal status; to a Washington, DC, meeting of the "Patriotic Millionaires," a club of high-earners who are begging the government to tax them; to a luxury auto factory in the south of Italy where making beautiful cars is as much about bringing dignity to a low-earning region than it is about flash and indulgence; to a London lab where the neural secrets of status are being unlocked. "Chock-full of fascinating revelations" (In Touch Weekly) and with his signature wit and irreverence, Thompson explains why everything we know about status is changing, upends centuries of conventional wisdom, and shows how the new status revolution reflects our place in contemporary society.

Jasper Lilla's mother, Vernalisa, returns from Hendersonville with a nasty bite from a Black Mambasnake. Because Vernalisa is who she is the bite does not kill her, but it does put her in a coma. WithVernalisa out of the way, the balance of power in nature is threatened. The threat comes in the form ofa mysterious red-headed woman who uses the opportunity to expand her dominion. If she wins all of nature will be diseased and decay. In her service is a host of crazed vermin and scavengers. The onlything standing between her and the demise of planet earth is 17-year- old Jasper Lilla, his sister, theirnanny and the wolves of Banner Elk.

"As if Kevin Phillips's American Theocracy were being narrated by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi," Chuck Thompson's "viciously funny and thoroughly tasteless" examination of Southern secession was one of the most controversial books of the year (Washington Monthly). Chuck Thompson--dubbed "savagely funny" by the New York Times and "wickedly entertaining" by the San Francisco Chronicle--spent two years traveling the American South to determine whether, as he'd long suspected but not yet proven, the whole country might be better off letting Dixieland make good on its two-hundred-years-old threat to secede. The result is a long overdue and serious inquiry into national divides that is deliberately provocative and uproariously funny while making a compelling case for "a kind of no-fault divorce for nation-states: no hard feelings, just two adults who can't quite make the relationship work, shaking hands and walking away" (The Oxford American).