[1] His father, Nelson Aldrich III, worked as an architect and was chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; his mother was Eleanor (Tweed).
[3] His great-grandfather, Nelson W. Aldrich, was a leader of the Republican Party in the Senate and fundamental in the founding of the Federal Reserve banking system in the United States.
[2][4] He then studied American history and literature at Harvard College,[2] where he was a member of the Porcellian Club and edited i.e., the Cambridge Review.
[2] He taught at Long Island University and City College of New York,[2] produced a television program, and was employed as a lobbyist.
[3] Aldrich wrote the cover story to a January 1979 issue of the Atlantic, titled "Preppies: The Last Upper Class?"
Fellow author Adam Hochschild characterized the work in the Los Angeles Times, calling it "as thoughtful a psychological portrait of America’s aristocracy as we have.
"[2] Aldrich's daughter later recounted how he was spurred to write on the subject "by a need to understand, uncover, and explain to others the class he was born into.