Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby, pictured in front of his yellow Rolls-Royce, from 1974’s *The Great Gatsby.*

The Preppy Crack-Up

By Michael Knox Beran

Flight of the WASP: The Rise, Fall, and Future of America’s Original Ruling Class by Michael Gross

“I could have managed my life in a better way,” Whitney Tower Jr. concedes.

Tower is a descendant of both Cornelius Vanderbilt, one of America’s greatest money magicians, and William Collins Whitney, a Gilded Age prince who, though he never rolled in it the way the Commodore did, made a respectable fortune in streetcars.