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Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There Paperback – March 6, 2001

3.7 out of 5 stars 244 customer reviews

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Product Details

  • Paperback: 284 pages
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster; New edition edition (March 6, 2001)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0684853787
  • ISBN-13: 978-0684853789
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (244 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #87,155 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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By Allen Smalling TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on May 29, 2000
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
"Bobo" is author David Brooks' acronym for a Bourgeois Bohemian, a synthesis of Reaganism and Woodstock, the folks he says are running the country today. Bobos are new money--the meritocracy of smart folk who have become rich as fast-track professionals, clever enterpreneurs, start-up capitalists, or visionaries like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. Some Bobos are capitalistic hippies and some are mellowed-out business people; Bobo is their common meeting ground. True to their mixed heritage, Bobos love oxymoronic concepts like "sustainable development," "cooperative individualism" or "liberation management." Reconciliation is their middle name.
Bobos dislike showing off, but of course all rich people do, so they are allowed to show off in discreet ways. Mercedes are out, but SUV's are in. Jewelry is out, but eco-tourism is in. Bobox buy the same things the rest of us do (bread, chicken, coffee) but pay from 3 to 10 times the mass-market price in search of something better, organic, or more planet-friendly. In fact, anything that shows one to be a friend to the planet is fair game, no matter how silly. There's even a toothpaste that encourages germs to leave the mouth.
Needless to say, it takes a huge income to be a true Bobo. Brooks almost had this reviewer feeling sorry for the poor U. of Chicago professor forced to live on a "mere" household income of $180K, barely enough to cover private schools for her kids and a nanny. The wretch suffers from what Brooks calls "status-income disequilibrium" or "SID" because her pay, while handsome, pales before her similarly educated peers in the professions and business, with whom she has to socialize at symposia.
America teems with the newly rich.
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Format: Paperback
Nobody wants to be called a yuppie these days. As a social phenomenon, the yuppies, with their power suits and moussed hair, are now looked back upon with about as much affection as the Hitler youth. They were pushy and arrogant, yet they seemed to be everywhere.
So where did they all go? David Brooks ventures an amusing answer in Bobos in Paradise, in which he defines and describes a new social class, the 'bourgeois bohemians', or bobos. A bobo combines the solid fiscal sensibility of the village burgher with the daring lifestyle choices of the left bank. Brooks thinks bobos reconcile the great social cleavage of the 1960s between the squares and the counterculture.
Bobos in Paradise is a very funny, entertaining book, and it's highly readable. Brooks is a very clever salesman -- much more so than his brutally honest predecessor in 'comic sociology', Paul Fussell, whose 1983 book *Class* is a much more pointed analysis of the American social system. Fussell heartlessly dissects and illustrates his three major classes, i.e. upper, middle and lower, all of which he sees as roiling moshpits of status consciousness and envy. Brooks is much less brave: as a self-professed bobo, he only tweaks his upper-middle-class, book-buying, bobo audience, satirizing bobo sensibilities yet carefully avoiding any violations of serious bobo taboos. He's good at seeming to be a bad boy.
But bobos aren't upper-middle class, you protest! Doesn't Brooks himself identify them as the nation's new 'upper class'? .... Fussell, wherever he is these days, would chide Brooks for missing the ways in which bobos are in fact achingly middle class.
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Format: Hardcover
Reading through the previous reviews recorded here on this book, I wasn't surprised that some readers loved it, others hated it, and some noted its superficiality while being amused.
Brooks' concept of Bobos (Bourgeois Bohemians) is fascinating and at times his observations sparkle, but he is utterly unconvincing when he argues that Bohemian values "rule" in America today. Clearly, Brooks is aware of the view that Bohemian values have been coopted by the corporate establishment and used as a marketing vehicle; but he makes little effort to explain why he rejects this view for one that exhalts the supposed power of people who are too easily stereotyped for eating granola and wearing Birkenstocks.
There is much in this book that struck me as wrongheaded--especially when Brooks obsesses on surface-level concerns rather than their deeper meanings, such as the repeated shots he takes at those Bobos who may prefer to buy a hand-woven blanket made in Guatemala rather than a synthetic one manufactured in America. As if this is a matter of great importance.
Despite its shortcomings, Brooks' insights make the book well worth a reading--his observations, for example, on Latte Towns, the new morality of Bobos (with its central focus on medical rather than religious injunctions), and the culture of Seattle can be both wickedly funny and insightful.
Brooks is the sort of conservative a liberal like me can enjoy. In reviewing the attacks of more strident right-wing commentators, Brooks provides a sensible corrective to the overwrought ravings of the Clinton haters and those conservatives, such as Robert Bork, who descend to self-parody when they reflect on the nightmare of "the Sixties.
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