Share <Embed>

Buy New

$5.95

Try Audible for free and start listening now!

Listen instantly in the free Audible app.
Get this audiobook, plus a second, free.
Listen anytime, anywhere, on any device.

After 30 days, Audible is $14.95/mo. Cancel anytime.

List Price: $17.00
Save: $11.05 (65%)

$5.95

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

Ships from and sold by tomthecat82.

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

This item does not ship to France. Please check other sellers who may ship internationally.

Deliver to France

Added to

Unable to add item to List. Please try again.

Other Sellers on Amazon

Add to Cart

$12.99

Sold by: Meju Manufacturing & Exporting Company

Add to Cart

$10.00

Sold by: Erwin Rysz

Add to Cart

$16.23
& FREE Shipping on eligible orders. Details

Sold by: Amazon.com

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 3 images

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

by David Brooks (Author)

214 customer reviews

See all 13 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

"Please retry"

$13.77

—

—

"Please retry"

$12.50

Paperback

"Please retry"

$5.95

Audible Audiobook, Abridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Do you believe that spending $15,000 on a media center is vulgar, but that spending $15,000 on a slate shower stall is a sign that you are at one with the Zenlike rhythms of nature? Do you work for one of those visionary software companies where people come to work wearing hiking boots and glacier glasses, as if a wall of ice were about to come sliding through the parking lot? If so, you might be a Bobo.
In his bestselling work of "comic sociology," David Brooks coins a new word, Bobo, to describe today's upper class -- those who have wed the bourgeois world of capitalist enterprise to the hippie values of the bohemian counterculture. Their hybrid lifestyle is the atmosphere we breathe, and in this witty and serious look at the cultural consequences of the information age, Brooks has defined a new generation.

Frequently bought together

+
+

Total price: $28.45

These items are shipped from and sold by different sellers. Show details

Buy the selected items together

This item:Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There by David Brooks Paperback $5.95
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Ships from and sold by tomthecat82.
$3.99 shipping
The Road to Character by David Brooks Paperback $10.25
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement by David Brooks Paperback $12.25
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

David Brooks

510

Paperback
$12.25
David Brooks

59

Paperback
$14.47
David Brooks

1,567

Paperback
$10.25
Charles Murray

606

Paperback
$15.30
Dennis L. Gilbert

14

Paperback
$85.50
Roopali Mukherjee
Paperback
$28.00

Sponsored products related to this item (What's this?)

Page 1 of 1Start overPage 1 of 1

Feedback

Jason Chaffetz

Jason Chaffetz explains how we ended up with a federal government that actively works to defend the Democratic party and undermine Trump.

108

Just Released

Hardcover
$17.39
Feedback

Scott LaPierre

Apply the biblical recipe from Marriage God's Way! Perfect for your relationship or a church bible study. Insightful questions for husbands and wives.

23

Paperback
$11.35
Feedback

Thomas L. Friedman

We can overcome the stress of an age of accelerations if we slow down, dare to be late, and use the time to reimagine work, politics, and community.

891

Paperback
$9.89
Feedback

Travis Bradberry

1248

Hardcover
$14.99
Feedback

Roman Gelperin

A self-help manual, and a rigorous analysis of the psychology of motivation. Solve your motivational problems, by understanding how the mind works.

263

Paperback
$8.09
Feedback

Haris Dimitriadis

Find the happiness to which you are entitled by exploring the teachings of Epicurus in this debut philosophical study–cum–self-help guide.

32

Kindle Edition
$6.99
Feedback

Shelley Hitz

Get this 7-week book and video study to help you transform your broken crayons into a masterpiece. Videos, leader’s guide and other bonuses included.

105

Kindle Edition
$4.49

Editorial Reviews

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 the Author

David Brooks writes a biweekly Op-Ed column for The New York Times and appears regularly on PBS's The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and NPR's All Things Considered. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product details

Paperback: 284 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Paperback Edition edition (March 6, 2001)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0684853787
ISBN-13: 978-0684853789
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.2 x 8.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 214 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #287,702 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1624 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Pop Culture > General
- #6089 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Sociology
- #17721 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences

Would you like to tell us about a lower price?
If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?

Be the first video

Your name here

Sponsored products related to this item (What's this?)

Page 1 of 1Start overPage 1 of 1

Feedback

Thomas L. Friedman

We can overcome the stress of an age of accelerations if we slow down, dare to be late, and use the time to reimagine work, politics, and community.

891

Paperback
$9.89
Feedback

Roman Gelperin

A self-help manual, and a rigorous analysis of the psychology of motivation. Solve your motivational problems, by understanding how the mind works.

263

Paperback
$8.09
Feedback

Travis Bradberry

1248

Hardcover
$14.99
Feedback

Timothy R. Jennings

214

Paperback
$14.45
Feedback

Shelley Hitz

Get this 7-week book and video study to help you transform your broken crayons into a masterpiece. Videos, leader’s guide and other bonuses included.

105

Kindle Edition
$4.49
Feedback

Josh Burnette

Adulting (verb): To do grown-up things and have responsibilities such as a working full time, paying rent, or owning a car.

73

Hardcover
$12.84
Feedback

Haris Dimitriadis

Find the happiness to which you are entitled by exploring the teachings of Epicurus in this debut philosophical study–cum–self-help guide.

32

Kindle Edition
$6.99

Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features:

See Kindle Edition

Customer reviews

3.7 out of 5 stars

Write a customer review

See all 214 customer reviews

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

What happens when you fuse "Bourgeois" and "Bohemian"?

September 29, 2017

Format: Hardcover

A fun and generally well-written book that has updated the "Yuppie" generation a major step. Today's real successes, opines journalist David Brooks, are the "bourgeois-bohemians" (or BoBo's) who make long green updating granola values. A BoBo might be an investment counselor to the self-employed successes who work in "latte towns" (think: rich college towns like Northampton, MA) with their German pedestrian malls, Scandinavian government, Native American crafts, and Berkeley-style human rights groups. Or s/he might be a rich business start-up who made a killing selling ten-speeds, hoagies, or yoga clothing in such venues. Although this book is eighteen years old, it's well worth a read.

145 people found this helpful

Comment

Entertaining work written by a respected social chronicler of American culture

March 18, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

An insightful work of social chronicling, written by an astute, clever, and keen cultural historian. Brooks’ trenchant observations on American culture, particularly from 1980 to 2000, are quite entertaining. Reading this book, I can’t help but think that the author wanted to be a novelist, as his prose is novelistic and at times, downright funny when analyzing the absurdities of social behavior in the United States:

“Universities tolerate tattoos and piercing that would have seemed outrageous in the early 1950s, but they crack down on fraternity drinking rituals that would have seemed unexceptional. We feel less strict with our children, but in fact we intervene in their lives far more than parents did in the 1950s.”

I mean, I work in academia and don’t get it. A guy who wears a tie, smokes a cigarette, and likes to drink at the college pub is more of a threat than someone who looks like he just left a Slipknot concert. And yes, he’s the guy sitting next to your daughter in her “History of Sexuality” class at her private college. So this book resonates with me.

Also, Brooks’ insight on scantily clad women everywhere one looks is hilarious:

“To get a firsthand glimpse of these new codes, go down to your local park in the summertime. You’ll see women jogging or running in sports bras and skin-tight spandex pants. […] Women running around in their underwear in public. They’re not exposing themselves for the sake of exhibitionism. Any erotic effect of their near nudity is counteracted by their expressions of grim determination. They are working out.”

The preceding quote is amusingly accurate. It’s like I am reading a Tom Wolfe novel!

He makes several other good points: Americans no longer worship God, really, they worship health and their bodies. (I suppose it is truly a temple, as our Sunday School teachers taught us—before the Protestant decline in the U.S., which Brooks ably covers!) Also, the “intellectuals” today are bit soft—they go to bed early and are more concerned with getting their kids to school and making sure the “I Support NPR” bumper sticker is clean on the Prius—rather than discussing hermeneutics or Jorge Luis Borges, for example, over some whiskey and beer. I mean, it seems the Christopher Hitchens days of drinking and talking all night might be gone.

The text runs a bit long—he could have cut it down by 50 pages or so—and at times his commentary is too exaggerated, but overall this is a book that historians will read 20, 30 years from now in order to understand the pre-9/11 gilded age of the 1980s and 1990s. And yes, I hate to say it, but it is refreshing that Brooks is a moderate, and not completely consumed by political ideology.

Good read.

7 people found this helpful

Comment

September 7, 2018

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

David Brooks is almost a self-caricature of the public intellectual, and he seems to oscillate between an ironic self-
awareness of this and the lack thereof. This was epitomized in the sandwich controversy last year, which briefly
interrupted everybody's arguing about Trump and allowed all sides to dump on Brooks. He brought a young
lady friend to an Italian sandwich deli and realized that she wasn't familiar with some of the names and might
be self-conscious about it and uncomfortable, so he wrote a column and told the whole world in the New York
Times. The internet went nuts! The left couldn't stand him because he's a conservative elitist, and many on the
right these days can't stand him because he's a conservative elitist. This episode shows how the book, written
at the turn of the millenium, has become outdated.

Brooks was allied with Bill Kristol and John Podhoretz, but he's actually more like their fathers and mothers,
the original neocons, with not just foreign policy but a heavy emphasis on culture, and he does discuss the
previous generation in this book. Brooks is liberal on gay marriage and similar issues, but also has a desire
for community similar to his fellow Times columnist Ross Douthat, as outlined in the chapter on religion
and community and his recent book on character. Bobos in Paradise is a work of informal sociology that
goes with the insights of Charles Murray, whose Bell Curve is mentioned but whose more important work
may be the later Coming Apart, as well as liberal communitarians like Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone.

Brooks works in a heck of a lot of his fellow public intellectuals. There's a joke about Francis Fukuyama's
End of History being "wrong" because history didn't end. But in fact Fukuyama's book really is widely
seen to have been wrong, because liberal democracy has not triumphed the way that he observed. Russia,
China, the US and various parts of Europe are going for nationalism and populism. Fukuyama is now writing
on identity politics, which is a function of the crackup of his post Cold War order. Bobos in Paradise also
has turned out to be outdated. Bill Clinton's centrism on the budget and welfare reform, crime, school
uniforms and v chips, and George W. Bush's compassionate conservatism as more than just getting government
off our backs, are signs of the Bobo consensus, combining 60s bohemianism with the 80s bourgeois values.

But it hasn't turned out that way. Obama's liberalism undid Clinton's centrism as the focus of the Democratic
Party, and even before that there was 2004 with Dean, Kucinich and Sharpton, as the Dems went nuts after
Iraq. I was reading this book the day of John McCain's funeral, and both Democratic candidates, Al Gore and
Bill Bradley, and the top two Republicans, George W. Bush and McCain, were identified by Brooks as Bobos.
Who's not accepted by Bobos as their representative? The first name was Donald Trump, and then for different
reasons Pat Robertson. Bobos can spend money, but it has to be for a serious and useful purpose, and Trump was
lavish for exactly the opposite reasons.

Being from Plattsburgh area, I found the description of Burlington as the new Berkeley to be absolutely hilarious,
with all the freaks on the Church Street marketplace and the serious Bobos eating it up. But the most important
epitome of the Burlington mentality is Bernie Sanders, who in important ways has gone nationwide and just like
Trump, reflects the breakup of the Bobo consensus.

Comment

Longtime Amazon Customer

Good, but not as thorough as I was expecting it to be. Well-written. 3.5 stars.

September 10, 2018

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I would actually give this one 3.5 stars. It's a bit dated at this point, having come out in 2000, but it is a classic David Brooks work, and his skills of cultural/historical observation (especially modern and postmodern eras) were in full swing. The chapter on Bourgeois-Bohemian politics was a bit short, and some of his conclusions there were a bit too simplified.

His sections on the issues of profligate spending and materialism and the excuses the bobos make for some of them while condemning others were also too short. Loved his detailed level descriptions of subcultures, mostly socioeconomic, but some were based on ethnicity. He was careful not to be offensive in either direction.

I do recommend this book to those who are David Brooks fans, and as an introduction to the whole concept of trying to decipher what motivates the "New Upper Class" but don't stop here if you do start with this title. I am in the process of looking at other works in this area and will review them as I get through them.

Comment

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway

This item: Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There

Set up a giveaway

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

David Brooks

1,567

Paperback
$10.25
David Brooks

510

Paperback
$12.25
David Brooks

59

Paperback
$14.47
Gene Edward Veith Jr.

96

Paperback
$15.99
aBookaDay

30

Paperback
$6.99
Anthony de Mello

296

Paperback
$8.99

Pages with related products. See and discover other items: david west

English United States

Conditions of Use
Privacy Notice
Interest-Based Ads
© 1996-2018, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates