The melancholy & danger of inherited wealth

Trapped in a silk-draped Venn diagram with the socialite and hostess, the heiress has been an unfair object of ridicule

HEIRESSES: The Lives of the Million Dollar Babies

Author: Laura Thompson

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Price: $29.99

Pages: 378

You might think that being an heiress is all fun and games —actual games, like whist, or tag in a topiary maze —but to read Laura Thompson’s new book, Heiresses: The Lives of the Million Dollar Babies, is to apprehend two serious risks you may not have considered: (1) getting kidnapped and (2) boredom.

We’re not talking about a little mild ennui (Anglo-American heiresses, the focus of Ms Thompson’s scrutiny, often prefer French words, like le gratin for high society or bel homme for a particularly toothsome