Merchant, Soldier, Sage: A History of the World in Three Castes

Oxford's Priestland (The Red Flag: Communism and the Making of the Modern World), an expert on the Soviet Union and scholar of 20th-century comparative history, provides a nuanced, culturally aware, Marxist-influenced reading of the shifting ascendancies, rivalries, and collaborations of three elite groups (the "castes" of merchant, soldier, and sage). These groups are fluid; for instance, one of Priestland's subjects, Robert McNamara, worked for years in corporate America ("merchant"), eventually heading Ford Motor Co. He was then recruited by President John F. Kennedy to serve in his administration ("sage") as secretary of defense, whereupon his stewardship of the Vietnam War, first under Kennedy, then under Lyndon B. Johnson, enshrined his legacy as an exemplar of the "warrior caste." Priestland begins his study with Genghis Kahn and Beowulf and with uncommon erudition pays equal attention to Asia and the developing world and Western Europe and the United States while managing to sustain narrative momentum. He is not sanguine about the future; his story ends with the warrior's disastrous demise in Iraq, the Wall Street merchant's destruction of investment as a driver of economic growth, and the dubious rise of "Davos Man," a closed elite of extraordinarily wealthy sages—many with business and military credentials—who annually attempt to contain the world's problems at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.