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Book Description
Classic of economic and social theory offers a satiric examination of the hollowness and falsity suggested by the term "conspicuous consumption" (coined by Veblen), exposing the emptiness of many cherished standards of taste, education, dress, and culture.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Viva Veblen!!!,
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This review is from: The Theory of the Leisure Class (Paperback)
This is one of the most thought provoking books I have read in a long time. Veblen leaves no stone unturned in his dissection of America's upper class and the unconscious traditions that lead them, and us. It is not hard to understand the volcano that erupted with this books publication. The Penguin edition is also set in an elegant Caslon typeface that reads beautifully.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Like Butter, Baby,
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This review is from: The Theory of the Leisure Class (Paperback)
Sad to say, the Dover durables of midcentury and beyond are gone (if not forgotten); but when this value-price line was introduced in the mid-'90s, this book in particular was very welcome. Herein (though not exclusively) we find Veblen supplying an alternative to Nietzsche, specifically *Beyond Good and Evil*. This is a book about morals, or the lack of them; but coming from a man who all-but-assaulted his estranged wife with "notions" one ought not to expect a rousing defense of bourgeois morality. Rather an unstinting defense of some other way of life (such as is provided in his impossibly rare *Instinct of Workmanship*) what we have here is a Grand-Guignol treatment of the "life-lie" Veblen calls conspicuous consumption, which just might happen to exclude Symbolist "vitalism" (and as to the provenance of the concept "dolicho-blond", consult Veblen's essay on the American small town). One of Marx's more assiduous Edwardian readers, such that people who can stand to consider social life in widest compass can stand to plunk down three dollars for this (rather fragile) volume.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Vanitas, vanitatis!!,
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This review is from: The Theory of the Leisure Class (Paperback)
Mr. Veblen is a refined person in the use of the words he uses to address and explain the economic habits of the refined people of the upper-class of the beginning of the last century. He spares no expenses in detailing in a very polite manner the idiossincracies of the noble and very rich when deciding what to buy, what to use and how to behave, going also to all lenghts explainning how these habits mold and form the habits of the not so rich and noble strata of the society. His theory of the leisure class reachs significance when compared to the rationality which some economists, classics and neo-classics, ascribe to the human being as an economic agent. I was quite surprised by the elegant style of Mr.Veblen and the fine irony (which he does not admit) with which he treats the rich and noble of his time. Sure, this is a book which could be also serve well times ahead and before Veblen's time.
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