| Blurb points to the author's other book Pull: Networking and Success Since Benjamin Franklin Suggesting that she indeed thinks of the self-made myth itself as a product of many cooks. I'm more skeptical of her framing this mythmaking as an early but enduring model for populist strategy that was (initially) opposed by the elites of the time. For context, a review of hers of antitax historiography asks: How do the privileged rule a democracy without triggering a populist revolt? Scholars Steve Fraser, Gary Gerstle, and their colleagues in Ruling America (2005) see historical continuity in the exercise of the founts of riches and power at elites' disposal. The Power to Destroy astutely addresses this question without asking it directly. Even so, a longer historical perspective would have enriched Graetz's approach to analyzing a populist revolt and its destructiveness. The revolt he tracks was not triggered against the rich and powerful, but on their behalf against the progressive state. His analysis provides an invaluable and distressing new twist on the long-standing question of how the privileged rule in a democracy https://muse.jhu.edu/article/955278 https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691225562/th... My own derived question is whether there are historical examples of directed-myth-making (fully adopting your balanced perspective on "individual VS communal values") servicing political goals _orthogonal_ to the populism/elitism axis |