Preface -- Introduction: of ruling classes and underclasses : the laws of social mobility -- Social mobility by time and place -- Sweden : mobility achieved? -- The United States : land of opportunity -- Medieval England : mobility in the feudal age -- Modern England : the deep roots of the present -- A law of social mobility -- Nature versus nurture -- Testing the laws of mobility -- India : caste, endogamy, and mobility -- China and Taiwan : mobility after Mao -- Japan and Korea : social homogeneity and mobility -- Chile : mobility among the oligarchs -- The law of social mobility and family dynamics -- Protestants, Jews, gypsies, Muslims, and copts : exceptions to the law of mobility? -- Mobility anomalies -- The good society -- Is mobility too low? : mobility versus inequality -- Escaping downward social mobility -- Appendix 1: Measuring social mobility -- Appendix 2: Deriving social mobility rates from surname frequencies -- Appendix 3: Discovering the status of your surname lineage -- Data sources for figures and tables -- References -- Index.