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Title: Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There by David Brooks ISBN: 0-684-85378-7 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 March, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.54 (165 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: An enjoyable foray into modern culture and 'demography'
Comment: This is an enjoyable book, which takes an amusing look at what you get when you mix sixties pop-culture with eighties mainstream economics culture. Rather than the tortured souls you might expect, you get Bobos! David Brooks examines this phenomenon in a light-hearted, yet affectionate manner.
But under the tongue-in-cheek veneer are some important cultural messages. Strip away the $5 bagels and $5,000 shower stalls, and there are people searching for meaning in life (see Erich Fromm's books for a different view on this), because they have a complex mix of cultures behind them that need to be resolved. A critical point is that education matters, possibly above all else. It creates the need for the search, but also enables the search to take place.
This book will give you an important insight into the state of the current generation of people well up the tree. It's not highly academic, it's not impersonal and impartial, it doesn't get deeply into the psychology and cultural isses involved. But these aren't weaknesses of the book. This is a first overview of the field. We can expect more material in time, in other forms.
Rating: 4
Summary: An intriguing study of the "new meritocracy"
Comment: 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 society. A Bobo, he claims, is a hybrid of the bourgeois and the bohemian--a "new meritocracy" or "educated elite." Bobos are the new movers and shakers of American business--in banking, law, the media, anything connected to the high-tech industry, even Hollywood. And like the preppies and the yuppies before them, they're making their mark on the rest of us: Starbucks, for example, was specifically envisioned as a Bobo hangout.
Brooks claims that Bobos despise yuppies, but a close study of his book will show that the two groups have several significant things in common. Both are educated professionals (though many Bobos, especially those in computer-connected fields, are college dropouts or never-wents, Bill Gates being the most obvious example) pulling in high salaries (from a minimum $100,000 annual gross to several million); couples are always dual-income. Both are comfortable with high tech in all its latest manifestations. Both take conscientious care of their bodies--no smoking, no drugs, only moderate alcohol consumption, health-club memberships, toning sports like running, skiing, and racquet games. Both are attracted to highbrow culture (Bobos are mad for museums and listen to NPR). Both enjoy vacationing in remote, out-of-the-way spots that don't expose them to the thundering herds of "fat tourists" pouring on and off busses. Both are entranced by "professional-grade" kitchen appliances and want to own a restaurant's worth of lesser tools and equipment. Both are happy to spend prodigious amounts of money on "things that used to be cheap"--everything from T-shirts to bottled water to coffee to food staples. Both think it important to expose their young to lots of broadening experiences, including, of course, private schools. Both are (or claim to be) in love with and consumed by their work. Some Bobos--those who are veterans of SDS or Woodstock--may even have done a turn as yuppies in the '80's before they discovered their true identity. But there are also important differences. The yuppie is a city dweller; Bobos prefer the suburbs (albeit high-end ones)--or small towns like Burlington, Vt., to which many of them eventually move to start up their own little dream businesses, often connected with food. Yuppies are conventional Organization Men and Women; Bobos value creativity, flat hierarchies, and a boss who gets right down in the trenches with his employees instead of issuing edicts from an ivory corner office. Yuppies love sleek, smooth, hard-edged decorating schemes; Bobos choose the country/rustic/ethnic look. Yuppie couples often consciously decide not to procreate, and when they do they confine themselves to one child; Bobos often have two or three (albeit well spaced apart). Yuppies boast about how exhausted they are by their work; Bobos seek balance.
The chief fault of this book is that Brooks can't seem to decide whether he comes to mock the Bobos or to praise them. In several of his chapters he adopts a wry voice, as when he discusses the seven rules for spending money, the most favored vacation destinations, or the REI store in Seattle where Microsoft staff loves to shop for explorer-type gear. But as he reaches the "intellectual life" section of the book he waxes sadly sympathetic toward the financial plight of the dual-income couple earning $180,000 a year and trying to send three kids to private school (the oldest is in Stanford). And in explicating the religious and political views of his subjects, he is completely serious; many readers, Bobos or not, will recognize themselves in his descriptions. He closes with a ringing call for the Bobos to assume a position of leadership and guide America "into its next golden age." All in all, it's an interesting book about a group many of us may not have really noticed up till now, but one which has a great influence on our lives.
Rating: 4
Summary: The Flavor of the Times Without Exactitude
Comment: David Brooks is a fine writer. I have always enjoyed his articles in the Weekly Standard, the Atlantic Monthly, and currently his column in the New York Times. He is a whimsical observer of American life. His writing has an inductive quality about it. He writes about slate shower stalls, cappuccino bars, eco-tourism, and the like. Pretty soon he has painted a landscape of American cultural trends. In the introduction of "Bobos in Paradise," Brooks describes his method: "The idea is to get at the essence of cultural patterns, getting the flavor of the times without trying to pin it down with meticulous exactitude" (pg 12). In the book with which Brooks will always be associated, he allows us to taste the surprisingly pleasant combination of bourgeois and bohemian cultures.
Being a pastor, I was especially interested in reading Brooks' observations on the spiritual life of the bourgeois bohemians. Bobos, according to Brooks, crave "freedom and flexibility on the one hand and the longing for rigor and orthodoxy on the other" (pg 224). Spirituality, like other areas of Bobo life, seems to display itself in utter contradiction. Frankly, the observation rings true. I see the same conflict in the lives of my parishioners. However, the observation rings too true. I wonder if these conflicts are inherent in human nature rather than particularly Bobo nature. Perhaps, Brooks would see the rich young ruler who desired eternal life, yet could not give up his wealth as the first Bobo (Luke 18). Nonetheless, this observation does not distract from the book since Brooks' intention is to make an impression not a necessarily win an argument.
The book has one major drawback. Brooks is a master as an author of articles. The book, however, has the feel of several articles strung together. After reading his acknowledgments, I realize that is exactly how the book developed. As a result, the flow is different from chapter to chapter. The reader sometimes has difficulty making the change. If you can suffer the disjointed feel, then you will enjoy a clever perspective of early twenty-first century life.
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Title: The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life by Richard Florida ISBN: 0465024769 Publisher: Perseus Books Group Pub. Date: 30 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (and ALways Have) in the Future Tense by David Brooks ISBN: 0743227387 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 May, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Class: A Guide Through the American Status System by Paul Fussell, Martim De Avillez ISBN: 0671792253 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1992 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Clustered World : How We Live, What We Buy, and What It All Means About Who We Are by Michael J. Weiss ISBN: 0316929204 Publisher: Little, Brown Pub. Date: 15 December, 2000 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: Trading Up: The New American Luxury by Michael Silverstein, Neil Fiske ISBN: 1591840139 Publisher: Portfolio Pub. Date: 09 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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