Newsday has also reviewed Dalton Conley’s latest book, ‘Elsewhere USA,’ and presented some strong feelings about the substantive focus of the book.

“Only in these times of economic meltdown could the common reader be persuaded to feel sympathy for the rich; in the past few months, multimillion-dollar portfolios evaporated and the noblesse oblige were bilked out of dollars destined for philanthropic causes. Into this unsteady new reality comes Dalton Conley’s “Elsewhere, U.S.A.,” in which the author argues that for the first time in our history, America’s rich are working harder and feeling more stressed out than our poor.

Is that the sound of a million tiny gold violins screeching? (Or should I say billion, since everything seems to have inflated to 10 figures these days?) Conley, author of six previous books, including the memoir “Honky,” is a member of the upper-income professional class that he writes about. But he also is chairman of the sociology department at New York University, and “Elsewhere” is a measured mix of social science, first-person reporting and historical research that is sometimes awkward but ultimately compelling.

Throughout, Conley traces the origins of “Elsewhere,” the nebulous location of the book’s title. As the disparate spheres of work and home collide and interpenetrate, it creates a sense of “elsewhere” at all times, presumably because one is never fully here nor there but in some murky in-between world.

In drawing a line from the past to the present, Conley sets his first pin squarely midcentury, highlighting “the growth of women’s work in the formal economy; the rise of information technology that allows many professionals to blend work and leisure on a 24/7 basis; and increasing inequality at the top of the ladder, as disparity grows between the upper-middle and upper classes.”

Conley makes clear that the confluence of these forces – not just working mothers or Blackberries alone – inspired a crippling mixture of guilt and anxiety in our upper class.”

Read on.