
Review by Kevin Brown
Evan Osnos’s collection of essays began as articles in The New Yorker, where Osnos has worked for seventeen years. He’s organized these ten essays into three sections: The Rewards (How to Spend It), The Mechanics (How to Keep It), and The Perils (How to Lose It). All three sections offer their own rewards, depending on what the reader is most interested in.
In the first section, Osnos explores the problem that the ultrarich have, two problems actually: how to spend the vast sums of money they have and how to use those purchases to show people just how much money they have. As the title reveals, yachts are a solution to both problems in the first essay, “The Floating World.” These yachts, though, are not what most of us think of, as there are now categories ranging from superyacht (more than ninety-eight feet) to gigayachet (more than two hundred and ninety-five feet), costing more than two hundred and fifty million dollars (and topping four hundred feet). What truly distinguishes the ultrarich here, though, is the service on the yachts. Given that the law only allows them to carry twelve passengers, even in such a large space, amenities and crew (who don’t count as people) take up the rest of the space, providing each passenger with numerous staff to ensure they have a luxurious time.
In The Mechanics, Osnos delves into trusts; social media and democracy; the move of country-club Republicans to Trump supporters; and how politicians and commentators, such as Tucker Carlson, attack the elite while belonging to the ultrarich. The three essays in The Perils center around fraud, primarily. The first two essays — “Land of Make-Believe” and “Patriot Games” — both portray people who pretended to be richer and more connected than they were to obtain wealth and power, only to lose it all in the end. The final essay, “The Big House,” discusses people who have been convicted of white-collar crime and how they adjust to life after prison.
The collection gives a varied look at those who have more money than most readers can even imagine, which can lead to shock and dismay, as well as anger and outrage. Osnos doesn’t seem to want to stoke any particular emotion in his readers. He’s content to present the stories as clearly and factually as he can, then let the reader decide how to react.
The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich by Evan Osnos. Scribner, June 2025.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels.

















































