Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There - Softcover

Brooks, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684853787 ISBN 13: 9780684853789

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2001

Synopsis

It used to be pretty easy to distinguish between the bourgeois world of capitalism and the bohemian counterculture. The bourgeois worked for corporations, wore grey, and went to church. The bohemians were the artists and intellectuals. Bohemians championed the values of the radical 1960's; bourgeois were the enterprising yuppies of the 1980's. Now the 'bo's' are all mixed up and it is impossible to tell an expresso sipping artist from a cappuccino-gulping banker. In attitudes toward sex, morality, leisure time and work, it is hard to separate the renegade from the company man. The new establishment has combined the countercultural sixties and the achieving eighties into one social ethos. These Bobos define our age. Their hybrid culture is the atmosphere we breathe, their status codes govern social life and their moral codes govern ethics and influence our politics. Our hybrid Bobo culture is going to be dominating society for a long time to come. Read all about it in this serious and witty essay on how we live now.

About this title

Review:

You've seen them: They sip double-tall, non-fat lattes, and chat on mobile phones while driving their immaculate SUVs to Pottery Barn to shop for £25 titanium spatulas. They tread down speciality cheese aisles in top-of-the-line hiking boots and think nothing of laying down £4 for an olive-wheatgrass muffin. They're the bourgeois bohemians--"Bobos"--an unlikely blend of mainstream culture and 1960s-era counterculture that, according to David Brooks, represents both our present and future: "These Bobos define our age. They are the new establishment. Their hybrid culture is the atmosphere we all breathe. Their status codes now govern social life". Amusing stereotypes aside, they're an "elite based on brainpower" and merit rather than pedigree or lineage: "dumb good-looking people with great parents have been displaced by smart, ambitious, educated, and anti-establishment people with scuffed shoes".

Bobos in Paradise is an American-focused, but brilliant, breezy, and often hilarious study of the "cultural consequences of the information age". Large and influential (especially in terms of their buying power), the Bobos have reformed society through culture rather than politics, and Brooks clearly outlines this passing of the high-class torch by analysing nearly all aspects of life: consumption habits, business and lifestyle choices, entertainment, spirituality, politics, and education. Employing a method he calls "comic sociology," Brooks relies on keen observations, wit, and intelligence rather than statistics and hard theory to make his points. Like any self-respecting Bobo, Brooks wears his erudition lightly and comfortably (not unlike, say, an expedition-weight triple-layer Gore-Tex jacket suitable for a Mount Everest assault but more often seen in the gym). But just because he's funny doesn't mean this is not a serious book. On the contrary, it is one of the more insightful works of social commentary in recent memory. His ideas are sharp, his writing crisp, and he even offers pointed suggestions for putting the considerable Bobo political clout to work. And, unlike the classes that spawned them--the hippies and the yuppies--Brooks insists the Bobos are here to stay: "Today the culture war is over, at least in the realm of the affluent. The centuries-old conflict has been reconciled." All the more reason to pay attention. --Shawn Carkonen

Review:

Janet Maslin The New York Times Delectable...a tartly amusing, all too accurate guide to the new establishment.

Chris Tucker The Dallas Morning News Thanks to Brooks, bobos will join preppies, yuppies, and angry white males in the American lexicon.

Emily Prager The Wall Street Journal Hilarious and enlightening.

Jonathan Yardley The Washington Post Perceptive and amusing. [Brooks] has identified the salient characteristics of this new elite, and he describes them with accuracy and wit.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0684853787
• ISBN 13: 9780684853789
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288