BOBOS IN PARADISE: THE NEW UPPER CLASS AND HOW THEY GOT THERE: Amazon.ca: DAVID BROOKS: Books

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I'M NOT SURE I'd like to be one of the people featured on the New York Times weddings page, but I know I'd like to be the father of one of them. Read the first page

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164 Reviews

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3.5 out of 5 stars (164 customer reviews)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Conflation and Gross Stereotypes, Jan 2 2004

By

R. Dudley (Glens Falls, New York United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (Paperback)

Bobos in Paradise is a work employing such gross stereotypes and historical conflation as to be close to unuseable. Funny, witty, yes. Accurate and up to date, no. He takes Wayne, Pennsylvania as an example of the BoBo paradise and then tells us about mass tastes that are more than a decade old. In order to sound hip he uses pop cult phrases that are just dead wrong or off the mark. For example, he says these Bobo's like "Bruise Colors", actually a phrase primarilly used for young girls "punk" lipstick, blues, greens, red browns, when what he is talking about are the standard Pottery Barn colors. Founding Fathers "went in for clean classical styles, not gaudy baroque ones" as proof of their bourgeois values. Evidently he doesn't know that the Baroque style was The style from about 1690 to 1730 and the Rococo dominated everything from about 1740 to 1790 and, in many places, well beyond. What is this guy talking about? "They were smart but not overly intellectual" WHAT ! Franklin was the intellectual par excellance. That was one of the reasons he was so popular in France. At a dinner for Nobel Prize winners, JFK said that "There has not been so much talent assembled in this room since Jefferson dined alone." People like Franklin, Jeffeson, Madison and many, many others had continual corrspondence with the leading intellectuals all over the globe. Brooks does as badly with the contemporary scene. He makes no clear differentiation between the distinctly different generations that have emerged from the mid century mark. Brooks has a spin, a very self congratulatory spin, he wants to put on his ideologically driven vision the facts be dammed. Read this for what the Neocons are up to and how they want to view the world. These people have always been behind the curve. In the 60's they supported the Vietnam War and refused to support the Civil Rights Movement. They are still stinging from the realization of how wrong they were. Today the "Bobos" are turning to Dean. You won't see that in Brooks until, of course, 20 years or so.

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Mildly interesting but ultimately flawed, Mar 5 2004

By

E. T. Sprenkle (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (Paperback)

One day, the upper middle classes woke up and discovered the bohemians. Enchanted, they did away with the formality of grandmother's parlour and embraced bare wood floorings, ethnic Indian fabrics artistically draped over their sofa, and hung modern art on the walls. They started to travel to interesting places off the beaten track, explored different cuisines, and broke down the interior walls of their houses as to encourage a open floorplan. They started reading radical writers and embracing unconventional notions. Sounds familar? David Brooks would have us believe that these people are his Bobos, a brand new social class that embraced both elements of bohemianism and the old bourgeoise. The people I described are actually the late Victorians/Edwardians at the dawn of the arts and crafts movement at the turn of the century.

So, Brooks' argument is largely flawed because what he describes as a new cultural phenomena is just a replaying of history. There's nothing inherently new about his Bobos.

That's not to say the book isn't worth reading. It's amusing, in part to observe how much has changed since it came out three years ago. As much as I hate to resort to using the old "post 9/11" cliche, it's true that the world of today after the end of the dotcom boom and after 9/11 (the book came out at the height of the dotcom boom) is a pretty different place. Much of the casualism he describes as invading the corporate world has disappeared and with the collapse of Enron, "creative thinking" in corporate finance has been discredited and the firms are going back to basic and sound economics and practice.

And the old WASP world hasn't disappeared-as much as the Times would like us to believe otherwise, it's still going strong in parts of America, notably the South, and even in NYC there are still WASP strongholds. What Brooks is correct on is that WASPS no longer dominate national institutions and are now just one group out of many. I wonder what Brooks would make of the current WASP revival in clothing fashion, with the return of Lacoste to the American market, and the revitalization of Lilly Pulitzer?

I will agree on one subject: America has become the ultimate consumerism society, to the extent that virtually everything is a form of consumerism. Even the WASP lifestyle has been condensed and packaged for the broad market a la RL Polo and other clothing label. Is there anything that has not been declared as a certain style?

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars A Vomitious Logical Fallacy from an "Educated Elite", May 26 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (Paperback)

Davey's book is interesting to read if you so desire to know what today's elites think of themselves.
Worth the while to discover the pompous delusions that these new upper class members hold of themselves: that they have reconciled counter-culturalism with ambition, among countless other irreconciliable things. Or that they are the "Educated Class", superior because of their formal educations compared to previous ruling classes. Perplexing how they ignore their utterly blatant hypocritical ways of life. Or even the fact that there is no mention of the role that class, gender, and race issues still greatly impair one's potential for equality in this nation. And Davey even mentions George W Bush in a good light... wow, absurd, but Davey's serious.
Reading such drivel is educational, so if you want to know what the new ruling class thinks of themselves (they're creative, intelligent, enlightened, ethical, environmentally friendly, and liberal, right?), Davey vomits it out self-assuredly here.
Oh, and Davey, there has been no reconcilliation. To believe in class equality means accepting the easy choice of rejecting the multi-million dollar life and actually working for wages like the majority of the nation.

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Most recent customer reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars The Perils of Upbeat Criticism
Brooks appears on Matthews show, and seems intelligent. That's why I bought the book. Generally, this book hits all the high points of American intellectualism. Read more

Published on Jun 19 2004 by George

4.0 out of 5 stars An intriguing study of the "new meritocracy"
While it may not be as catchy as "preppie" or "yuppie," in "bobo" David Brooks has coined a new term for a newly visible and significant segment of... Read more

Published on Jun 15 2004 by Chrijeff