It is a very moving and deeply satisfying version of the bestselling 1997 memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby, the 43-year-old Parisian fashion magazine editor who, at the very height of wealth, health and success was paralysed by a stroke and suffered from "locked-in syndrome".
Mr. Yursky argued that in contrast to Lear, who changed "because he was alone, and poor, expelled from everywhere and standing under the rain and snow," Mr. Khodorkovsky, who around 2000 introduced Western-style practices and accounting to his business empire, did this unbidden, when at the height of wealth and success.
About this kind of lordly spite, delivered from the condescending heights of wealth and privilege, Dickens of course wrote the book - several times over, but nowhere better than in A Christmas Carol.
But 1987, too, was a seminal moment for New York, then torn between new heights of wealth and decadence on Wall Street and the draining of jobs and taxpayers from the rest of the city.
In 1907, as corporations reached new heights of wealth and power, Congress made its views of the relationship between corporations and campaigning clear: It banned them from contributing to candidates.
Taking the long walks that would form his view of the city, Pamuk found a melancholy joy amid its Byzantine and Ottoman ruins, the old walls staggering between cemeteries, abandoned wooden houses and unexpected copses – a place "so poor and confused that it can never again dream of rising to the same heights of wealth, power and culture".
But in Manhattan, where the giddy heights of wealth, status and ego can induce as much vertigo as the tallest Trump tower, parents at all levels evinced a reluctance to discuss with their children issues of class inequality or its subset, conspicuous real estate, leading to the sort of finding that Dr. Johnson, the Lehigh sociologist, found chilling.
They share with him not only a faith, but also a dramatic history in which they have scaled the ladder of American society, starting as vilified outsiders and, after helping to settle the American West, rising to the heights of wealth and success within four generations.
The long-term result seems unavoidable: men are becoming ever more marginalised, while women are taking over the commanding heights of wealth and power.The new MadonnaIt is even plausible to argue that there is feminist-friendly news buried in the recent headlines.
To reach the truly heights of wealth, some risk is needed.
The US and Britain were very different places at the time: America was at the height of its wealth and global power, and abstract expressionism suited the confidence of this epic society.
