Welcome to Sparks From Culture
Weekly personal essays on wealth, status, and family from someone with generational wealth, writing with transparency.
Why Subscribe
My son Michael, 32 and the youngest of our three children, tells his friends that subscribing to my Substack is like “getting inside the mind of my dad for a bit each week.”
Both an endorsement and a warning.
I write to challenge my thinking and therefore my readers’ thinking about the topics of wealth and status, family and culture. I give my readers an honest view into what it’s like to live inside the Manhattan bubble.
If you choose to pay, I donate all subscription revenues to The Robin Hood Foundation, a leading poverty-fighting organization.
About Me
I had a nearly forty-year career in finance, mainly in investment management. I left finance a few years ago to pursue writing as well as to engage actively in grass-roots, high-impact philanthropy focused on fighting poverty.
I’m 64 years old and have a large, NYC based family, which means it’s hard to see ourselves ever leaving NYC. My wife Deborah also grew up in NYC. We have been married for 40 years and I write about her often. My readers have come to know her well.
Our daughter and our two sons are in their thirties. The two eldest are married so we actually have five children including our son-in-law and daughter-in-law. We have three very young grandchildren.
My email: robertsdavidn@gmail.com
Where to start:
On Wealth and Status
On Family and Culture
My Two Cents About My Inheritance
Every Real Couple Fights About Money And We’re No Exception
The Manhattan Nursery School Gods
Like every dog owner, we have the cutest and best dog in the world, our Shih-Tzu Sophie, picture below between my wife Debbie and me.
Hi David! Just my personal reaction as a reader/TV producer who gets lots of "read what's going on" email. I loved your previous title, "Let Me Challenge Your Thinking." It both invited interaction and evoked an open-mindedness right in the title that warns me that the content may make me uncomfortable AND also might make be a better person. It created a "safe space" for uncomfortable discussion (which I think is immensely important in this age of disrespectful disagreement), and the challenge is what made it unique and interesting. "Sparks from Culture" doesn't do either of those things. It has a generic, non-specificity that doesn't promise a unique or challenging point of view, nor does it invite readers to respond. I have no doubt that your pieces under your expanded and rebranded title will be great reads---you are a wonderful writer! However, I may not click through since there won't be a way to know which of those pieces will have that bold and friendly challenge to question my own assumptions of righteousness that help "keep me honest" on my journey toward being a better human being. I very much look forward to the ones that do.
David,
I'd be pleased to read about your progress in learning and playing bridge. It may cost you subscribers, however.
Your Cousin-in-Law (if there is such a thing),
Jim