Customer Reviews

The New Gilded Age: The New Yorker Looks at the Culture of Affluence

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As indicated in the review's title, the composite of this book is a useful and quite accurate historical view of the late-nineties. In light of this, the fact that these essays were written at the time is mostly negligible because the writers seem to have a sense of how the attitudes, fads, and people of the late-90s fit in to the broader themes that will come to define the period when it is transcribed by historians. This book is at its best when editor Remnick is mindful of this historical purpose. For example, the inclusion of two David Brooks essays offers perspectives on the social networks and the yuppie consumerism of the nineties that is both humorous and culturally relevant. The insclusion of Malcom Gladwell's "Six Degrees of Lois Weissberg," on the other hand, is somewhat self-indulgent: there is no justifiable reason that it should be included in a book about the late nineties, nothwithstanding the quality of the essay. Overall, the essays are of interest, though one would have liked to see less space devoted to essays about the internet and more space devoted to other areas of interest. On the other hand, I would much sooner have David Remnick's edited version of the late nineties than Tina Brown's!

I loved this book. The writing is great. What an amzing journey through the depths, heights and depths of affluence. I recommend it.

The pieces in this collection are a cut above the pieces you find in other weeklies, like New York magazine, but they suffer in comparison to "fact" pieces published during the Shawn administration. A lot of these pieces were obviously written in a hurry, and the haste is evident. David Remnick is a capable editor, but he's not a genius. Shawn was a genius.