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

Bobos ("bourgeois bohemians") are what come of the Protestant Establishment bedding down with flower children. Bobos are the issue of WASP and Kennedy Catholic, the Left Bank and the Right. Ben Franklin making cozy with Gustav Flaubert. A marriage of Episcopalian and Jew. A prep school Adonis seducing a grad school feminist. (Or perhaps that should be the other way around.) They are what happens to yuppies in the Age of Information. Bobos realize that the bottom line should be done in calligraphy; that six-figures of yearly income ought to buy more than the Wall Street Journal and cappuccino; that there is more to life than vintage port and the society pages.
Although Bobos in Paradise is packaged as a satire, and indeed a lot of fun is had with the meritocracy, it is actually an adoration written by a self-admitted member of the new elite. Since it is difficult to satirize your own class, Brooks's satire occasionally lacks bite. But it certainly doesn't lack pizzazz, sparkle, and a kind of "Look, Ma, I'm writing!" effervescence. Bon mots and witty catch phrases ("incidental money," "biscotti-nibbling Bobos," "New Age vaporheads," etc.) roll right off his tongue, or, I should say, spring adroitly from his keyboard. Thus on page 58 we learn that "Gone are the sixties-era things that were fun and of interest to teenagers, like Free Love, and retained are all the things that might be of interest to middle-aged hypochondriacs, like whole grains."
Sometimes we get a glimpse, however, that, although his eye is sharp and his wit keen, Brooks's verbal hijinks lack a certain substance, leading to a failure to convince. Thus on page 90 he writes: "The top-of-the-line fleece outergarments [worn by Bobos] are used for nothing more strenuous than traversing the refrigerated aisle in the Safeway." One thing wrong with this: the upper class doesn't shop at Safeway.
Or, on page 20, where he's talking about wedding section photos from the New York Times in the fifties, he observes, "and yet it's not really been so long-most of the people on those yellowing pages are still alive, and a sizable portion of the brides on those pages are young enough that they haven't yet been dumped for trophy spouses." Which means, I guess, that Brooks thinks that a man opts for a trophy wife at about the age of 70. Or maybe, caught up in the pleasing flow of his rhetoric, he doesn't notice when the meaning has gone slightly awry.
The book is organized into chapters defining the lifestyle of Bobos, the best of which is "Consumption," that which Bobos do best: conspicuously consume with a vengeance while remaining politically correct. The chapters are padded out a little with reviews of influential books of social criticism, e.g., William Whyte's The Organization Man, Theodore Roszak's The Making of a Counter-Culture or Paul Goodman's Growing Up Absurd, a group the author and his book clearly aspire to join.
Also excellent is the chapter, "Intellectual Life," in which Brooks focuses on think tank culture and demolishes it. For Brooks, a think tank is where underlings learn how to become intellectuals while going through a "buttboy stage" as they scurry with their stuffed briefcases behind the "front people" of the tanks, tired old icon intellectuals who "walk very fast to demonstrate their vitality" (p. 155). Brooks notes tellingly that if anything happened to the apprentice intellectuals "think tank reports across America would go out filled with typos for months."
A chapter on "Pleasure" suffers from Brooks's disinclination to reveal much about the sexual habits of Bobos. Other than to assert that Bobos like their sex healthy, safe and with rules, and that they don't just have orgasms, they "achieve them," Brooks is fairly mum. Whether Bobos do threesomes or prefer third world types for sexual thrills is apparently not known. Work itself is the real pleasure.
The chapter "Politics and Beyond" demonstrates that Bobos are a reconciliation of liberal and conservative, a mesh of the politics of the 60s and 80s. They would seem to be moderates, but by page 266 Brooks assures us happily that Bobos have clearly "become conservatives."
The chapter on "Spiritual Life" suffers from a kind of free-floating free-good association that Brooks wants to indulge. Bobos don't put down any religion, and in fact like to try them all on for size, picking and choosing from each what is best. One gets the sense however that Bobo heaven is a place where spirituality is expressed by buying, displaying and using politically correct consumer goods and services.
Make no mistake, though, this is the kind of book biz coup that we'd all like to have written. It's tasty pablum for those who would see themselves as the ruling class, a massage of prejudices, mores and self-centered delusions that would have amused Dwight MacDonald (author of "Masscult and Midcult," a seminal satiric essay from the fifties) or old H. L. Mencken who liked to shock the "booboisie" with his polemics, as does Brooks. In fact Brooks's Bobos look a little like Mencken's boobus americanus after a TV makeover.
Yet there's something reassuring in this fantasy of upper class life in American as the century and millennium draw to a close. Sure the power structure has been diluted by women and some unavoidable eggheadism, but by gosh, when all is said and done, it's still the same old guys who are running the show, upright people from such places as Wayne, Pennsylvania and Burlington, Vermont, people characterized, as their fathers were, by "restraint and sobriety." God's in his heaven and all is right in Bobo Land.

Mao Tse-tung was once asked what he thought the consequences were of the French Revolution. "Too early to say", was his response. Non-revisionist generational outlooks are difficult indeed. They tend to fall into one of three categories: The blurred (i.e. everything these days is just so muddled together that it's impossible to make some kind of generalisation about what's going on, i.e. Blur by Chris Meyer and Stan Davis); the lamenting (everything is going straight to hell and we're along for the ride, i.e. No Logo or Fast Food Nation) and those void of any critical analysis whatsoever (i.e. Funky Business by Nordstrom and Ridderstrale). Can you blame them? Analytical objectivity takes ages to master, as any psychoanalyst can attest to. Chairman Mao's statement underlines the difficulty in trying to put things into historical perspective. Bobo's in Paradise is an uplifting example of how these weaknesses can be turned into an advantage. The book is blurry, generalist, uncritical and, an absolute delight to read.
David Brooks is a full-fledged bobo himself. Although this is never quite articulated, one can piece together enough evidence in the text to put together a solid case. The bohemian bourgeoisie is nicely summed up by Brooks as having "the bohemian need to experience new things combined with the bourgeoisie need to achieve". Everything, Brooks continues, that bobo's touch or tamper with "turn into soul". This "Reverse Midas"-syndrome is a way of describing the mid-/ upper-class' self-importance in the latest decades. Never have so many people fought on the last rung of the Maslowian ladder. Never have so trivial and trite things as kitchen utensils or skiing equipment been loaded with so much "meaning". Something is indeed rotten in the state of Boboland.
What gives Brooks' work its charm is first and foremost his literary style. Written in a sort of mock-generational study language, the words savour with wit and sarcasm. But Brooks never succumbs to ridicule or prejudice. Behind each comment and observation lies an insight that can only have been gained from being there. If a non-Bobo would have written this, the book would more likely have fallen prey to the less interesting accusational/ political trap. Bobo's in paradise works at its best when read as an entertaining observation. Using the book as basis for all other discussions, important as they may be, should be avoided.

"Bobos in Paradise" exceeded my expectations for a non-fiction account of 1990s and 2000s culture. It is, unexpectedly, more than just a collection of observations from a social critic that might sell well at an airport bookstore. No, this is more a dissertation than pop reading -- a carefully weaved study of the new rich and the effect of the emergence of this class on our culture and society. It helps to locate this emerging class by identifying what it reads, how it shops, and what it dislikes in so many ways that are obviously true yet not obvious at all. Its most important and interesting contribution to the discourse of current society is its placing of this new amorphous class into its historical context, returning to the writings of Ben Franklin as well as such modern philosophers as Richard Rorty.
This book has so many "That's so true, but I never considered it" moments that reading it is less like reading an academic book and more like reading a long and more carefully crafted intellectual magazine article. I have about one of every three page corners turned down to remind me to return to it.
Best of all, this book is very, very accessible, well written, and funny. I feel smarter for having read it, and I will never buy a cup of coffee, buy camping gear at REI, or enjoy a CD the same way again. This is indispensable reading for anyone seeking to understand, market to, or identify with the class of the new but humble upper middle class. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

Readers seeking serious sociology may be a little disappointed by the lack of rigor here, but David Brooks has written a fine look at contemporary culture that avoids being either a paean or a jeremiad. It's a great read, and an apt view of a society trying hard to reconcile Romantic/bohemian ideals of radical individualism with classical conservative/bourgeois ideals of social stability. It is reminiscent of Paul Fussell's '80's book on social class in America, "Class," although Brooks has a lot more affection for his subject and is far less acerbic (and a lot less self-serving, too).
Anecdotes about the Arizona Power Exchange ("APEX") and "Flexidoxy" are striking and funny. APEX is a support organization for sado-masochism, once considered a bohemian topic, that manages to make S&M seem about as safe, boring, and, well, bourgeois as the Rotary Club. "Flexidoxy" is a coinage which describes a religious approach that is conservatively fastidious about the details of traditional religious worship, liturgy, dietary restrictions, etc., but allows the believer to pick and choose moral issues and doctrines. Details like these, and Brooks's brisk, smart style give the book its charm. Highly recommended.

As the the store review states, we all know who the Bobos are. If we don't see them buying or wearing outrageously expensive items, we must listen to them as they blab about buying them. But then, the more I read, I suddenly realize, "Oh my GOd, I am one of them!"
Yes, I get my morning latte and have spent hundreds of dollars on kitchen utensils (most recent purchase: deluxe measuring bar that adjusts for any of 15 different quantities). Brooks looks into every aspect of life - religion, politics, sex, pleasure (especially pleasure), work, children, clothes...there is hardly any subject left untouched. Yet, the text was slightly unorganized, seeming to blend the worst aspects of a self-help manual with the shortness of newspaper articles. One must also remember that this was written during the Clinton era of abject greed/prosperity (take your pick depending on political persuasion) that seemed to have no end.

I think "Bobos In Paradise" is one of the best books I have read in a long time. I look forward to reading David Brook's other books and have bought "On Paradise Drive." David Brooks has an extraordinary ability to integrate seeming contradictions in our personalities. Our society would be a much healthier one if more people had this ability to integrate polarities instead of assuming that they have to be polarizing! I am amused that David Brooks is often considered to be so conservative I think he is compassionate and libertarian in his political commentary. Given the ridiculous things that are occurring in the current Republican race I wish more of the candidates had his abilities. I was delighted to see that he doubled down on his bet that Donald Trump will not win the nomination. I would like to find a presidential candidate that has the brilliant analytical abilities that Brooks and Mark Sheilds have!
I learned so much and laughed out loud while reading this book. I have bought a number of copies as Christmas gifts-I freely admit I am a Bobo living in Winnetka and retiring in Naples!

David Brooks' "Bobos in Paradise" paints an accurate picture of today's upper class. His analysis of the New York Times wedding announcements, found early in the book, pretty much describes the entire "Bobo" phenomenon. Indeed, it is a phenomenon worthy of examination. That the bohemian and bourgeois cultures have merged is clearly evident in modern America. The days of the preppy bourgeois remain only in Polo/Ralph Lauren advertisements, while any bohemian unwilling to accept the fruits of capitalism and gain no longer exists.
Brooks does repeat himself often, and he does get bogged down in his examination of the origins of modern intellectualism. Though the subject matter represents merely a fraction of today's America, the book is very much worth reading as an engaging social commentary. Accordingly, Brooks deserves praise for his efforts to explain the "Bobos."

I'm writing having read it a long time ago but back on the store to recommend it to a friend whose parents, as they get more money, are doing the behavioral changes he describes in this book. I have to say, all these years later, it still sticks and even with a graduate program where we had to get all into our inner psyche, nothing nailed, with such great humor, my life and the life of friends and colleagues of my parents growing up. The fact that it's been 13 years and the book is still something I think about and suggest to people says something.

I had to put the book down a few times, laughing so hard. I can see if you don't belong to any of the cultures he is talking about it may seem odd. But my father was the "sturdy Toyota driving academic" that didn't want to be pretentious! ;-)

My first reference to this was in Aliens in America: The Strange Truth About Our Souls by Peter Augustine Lawler who uses the Brooks' concept of Bobo. A second reference to the book came by way of moral imperative when a friend handed the book to me and said "Read it." So I did. Since I have already read "The Bell Curve" and "The World is Flat" the thesis regarding the current elite class was not a surprise. It seems we are convinced that there is now a meritocracy that consists of people who bring a bit of anti-establishment along with them. That said there were still many examples DB describes that seemed out of touch with my own experience, yet on the whole this does not detract from the humor and point of the work. Lawler I think writes a more important book in Aliens. We shall see how this class holds up.

Bobos in Paradise by David Brooks gives readers a look at the characteristics of America's upper class today. He is most concerned with exploring the social changes following the 1950s collapse of the upper class WASP establishment. Brooks writes with plenty of humor making the book more enjoyable while maintaining an intellectual but not highbrow seriousness. The Bobos, according to Brooks, are a social class who embrace both the mainstream culture and the 1960s counterculture, and they represent the current status and future of American social establishment. Bobos are both free-spirited and successful in their careers. They are the new hierarchy who has replaced the WASPs, only the Bobos are more ethnically inclusive and their status is based on merit rather than ancestry.
The author derives most of his evidence from observation of the social changes and not from statistical data. David Brooks also considers himself a Bobo, and therefore writes his social commentary from a sort of insider perspective. The critical view of the Bobos is limited in that Brooks doesn't discuss the impact that the Bobos have on the lower classes. While millions of Americans do qualify as Bobos, there are ten times more Americans that do not qualify. Brooks seems to give the impression that with the arrival of the Bobos, all Americans can live a better life because, according the Brooks, it's good to live in a Bobo world. Although Americans may now live in a Bobo world, there is still hardship for those outside of the Bobo upper class.
The description of Bobo consumerism may very well be the chief strength of Bobos in Paradise. The portrait of Bobos as it is painted by Brooks is witty, yet at the same time it is sad in that Bobos spend so much money for nonessential items while the poorer classes struggle. The description of Bobo consumerism by David Brooks closely resembles a George Carlin joke. In a fairly recent HBO special, Carlin does a comic bit about how much he hates "parents who carry their kids around in backpacks so that their hands are free to shuffle through high-end merchandise." But this is the Bobos way of life complete with baby backpacks, SUVs, and Starbucks coffee.
Essentially, David Brooks gives readers an explanation for why today's elites are how they are. Readers come to understand that it's a mixture of 60s free-spirit mentality with mainstreamed consumerism fueled by the intellectualism of the information age. Brooks studies a society reformed by Bobos culture and not by politics as the WASP class once was. Those who are confused by the consumption of "professional quality" items by those who are not of a corresponding profession (page 89) or the consumption of grossly overpriced items (page 97) would most benefit from and enjoy Bobos in Paradise.

While reading Brooks new book "Bobos in Paradise" I looked up several passages in "Democracy in America" by Alexis de Tocqueville. Sure enough, old Alex had already pointed out some of the observations Brooks makes, and even cites near the end of his book --"is the danger that, amid all the constant trivial preoccupations of private life, ambition may lose both its force and its greatness, that human passions may grow gentler and at the same time baser, with the result that the progress of the body social may become daily quieter and less aspiring." Brooks may live in DC but it is obvious he doesn't have my commute with some very ambitious and non-gentle drivers.
"Democracy" contains another passage--Brooks does not cite--having to do with the constant striving of Americans for the almighty dollar. This image is picked up by Fitzgerald in "The Great Gatsby" where the green light at the end of Daisy's dock glows and recedes just out of Gatsby's reach.
I suppose I might fall into Brook's definition of BOBO, except that I am a bit older than his elite group, who seem to be first wave baby boomers. (Maybe he should have called them BABOs.) And, I don't drink latte anymore, just tea (really good tea of course), and I drive a 12-year old Toyota that gets really good gas mileage (my husband's car is older). Although my husband (now a counselor and retired from a large corporation) and I fall into the BOBO income group, we live in what the Claritas corporation calls a "Bohemian" neighborhood (42 ethnic groups in the local school and very Democratic). I'm a "sort of" SID (one of my publications is cited on the front page of the WP this date) but I gave up the rubber-chicken circuit some years ago and I left a Fortune 500 company to work for a more "worthy" organization.
We compost EVERYTHING organic (great earthworms), don't grow grass--only herbs and local flora plus a rose bush or two--have a NWF backyard bird approved yard. We shop at Land's End for jeans and chinos which we wear to work, and read lots of books. We don't ski, don't own a boat, and don't eat very much meat(chicken & fish) thus forgoing gourmet cooking and the need for an "over-the-top" kitchen). BOBOS live in 1.5 million houses and drive SUVs! Give me a break, these guys are NOT bohemian, they are wannabees.
Brooks has written a "pop" sociology book--"The Status Seekers" come to mind. It's exactly the sort of book that attracts the marketing class as this book will. One of my professors (I am a French-Marxist sociologist--trained at a state university--but of course) pointed out 20 years ago that we live in the "Age of McDonaldization." U.S.A. Today is "newsMcnuggets", Starbucks is "coffeeMcNuggets", and Smith and Hawkins is "EcoMcnuggets." As soon as any new idea arises it is quickly scoffed up by the marketing types and developed into a market-worthy items sold in shops from sea to shining sea (institutionalized), and the result is a flawed abstraction of the original.
What amazes me is how rapidly the market devolves an idea into various products to meet various market niches. In the 1960s we burned sandlewood incense for the heck of it. I don't even know why I did it except my friends were doing it and other Zen things, and it seemed radical at the time (I wasn't too daring). Today, you can find sandlewood scent in everything from candles at the boutique, deodorant for the bathroom, and air freshners in taxis.
Brooks fails to take on a really big issue--one that would give his "fluffy" book some weight. Who the heck is buying all that cocaine and heroin. Well, I have an idea, and I know for a fact that any number of those SUV drivers I encounter on the road are either on the stuff or something equally intoxicating.
I don't believe one can be both bohemian and bourgeois. This is the myth those who have abandoned their "values" tell themselves to salve their own conscience. You cannot drive an SUV and call yourself an environmentalist.

I agree with my fellow reviewers who feel that stretches of this book felt s-l-o-w or irrelevent (I tried to rate 3 1/2 stars, but I can't), but when Brooks is on, he's right on. I'd recommend the book for its description of Latte towns and his trip to the REI headquarters -- I was laughing so hard on this last one that I couldn't catch my breath. Seems that many bobos want to dress like they are going out on an artic expedition to go to the supermarket to give them that sense of adventure. Many of my friends and I fit the bobo descriptions, especially the idea of the masochistic vacations that represent a "fantastically expensive way to renounce the flesh in order to purify the spirit." Back to the REI description, he makes fun of the sunglass-clad crowd with glacier glasses "(because you can never tell when a 600 foot mountain of ice might suddenly roll into town, sending off a hazardess glare). Rather than obsess over some of the boring chapters, I'd suggest you read what you find interesting and skim through the other chapters. Brooks is a fun writer, so I found myself reading everything and then wishing I'd skipped a few sections. Despite my criticisms, he had so many sharp observations and witty writing that I highly recommend this book, especially to fellow bobos.

To begin with, David Brooks is not the first author to provide a comic take on affluent people striking bohemian rebellious poses. Thirty years ago, after all, Tom Wolfe gave us the marvelous essay and book, Radical Chic.
Brooks offers many keen observations about the Bobo outlook on work, consumption, politics, and so forth. Bobos in Paradise is interesting, thought-provoking, and worth the time spent reading it. I probably should give it five stars.
But. . .the tone of gentle irony was ultimately infuriating to me. It's like he is almost apologizing to Bobos for hinting at some hypocrisies and moral inconsistencies in their behavior. His final peroration reads, "They can be silly a lot of the time. But if they raise their sights and ask the biggest questions, they have the ability to go down in history as the class that led America into another golden age.".....
Rather than send the Bobos off on some great redemptive public crusade, I would prefer to see them first try to recover their moral compass. My views on the Bobo mentality are less sanguine than Brooks'. My site will have an essay on "Troubles in Bobos' Paradise."

I give this book one star for its entertaining qualities, in particular when describing certain qualities of the lifestyle of "Bobos". Sadly enough, that's all I have to say in favour of this book. I can't really recommend it to anybody who wants to learn more about Bobos or "The New Upper Class" as Brooks calls them. First of all, Brooks puts himself into the same category and throughout the book he is unable to detach himself from the idea of being one of them. Which is understandable because of the way he presents them. Bobos are smart and successful and they know how to live. Or so they think. Brooks is eager to point out all the flaws of bohemian and bourgeois citizens in the past but his description of the features of Bobos lacks any real criticism. Throughout the book you read between the lines "Ah, look at us, we're so smart that we allow ourselves to be a little bit critical of what we're doing." Brooks completely misses the amazing amount of shallowness of Bobos. This shallowness is much more pronounced than what's know from the old bohemian or bourgeois citizens. Brooks just doesn't get that and his book is as shallow as Bobos themselves. Don't expect any real insight. Well, maybe I'm too cynical because I'm from Europe but, yes, I did expect to find a more profound analysis of Bobo behaviour. But then Brooks wouldn't be a Bobo if he were able to come up with it.

Bobos in Paradise is a clever and fun book. I didn't find it laugh-out-loud funny, but I did find that it delivered some good smirks and chuckles from time to time (maybe just because I was on a plane I didn't want to indulge myself). Brooks's anecdotes about "Latte Towns" and the consumption habits of Bobos are his best.
This book has been criticized for not being analytical enough -- for not giving statistics backing up all the claims about Bobos -- and that's a fair criticism. However, I don't think hard statistical analysis is Brooks's aim here. He's trying to get a general "sense of things." More of a humanities approach than a social science approach, I'd say. With that in mind, Brooks's best chapter is one on the intellectual origins of the Bobo lifestyle. He gets into some classic works of history and sociology of the 50s and 60s, like Whyte's "The Organization Man" and Jacobs's "Death and Life of Great American Cities," and finds the ancestors of the Bobo culture. I was quite impressed by his efforts in this regard.
All in all, a good book that belongs on everyone's shelf. Not as funny as some have said, but not as intellectually shallow as others have said. I'm really interested to see if the word "bobo" is ready to invade our culture like the word "yuppie" did twenty years ago.

They river-raft in West Virginia, beach-bum in Jamaica, and hike in the high deserts of Arizona. You'll see them with their $3000 Pentium-charged laptops at Starbucks, ordering latte with orange valencia, and choking on dried, little, day-old scones. And they rally around the egalitarian views of Ben & Jerry at the same time they exchange day-trading secrets on RagingBull.com. They are the Bourgeois Bohemians (Bobos), the newest American elite.
In this fun little scuttlebutt of a book, the Weekly Standard's David Brooks describes a class of folks who "seemed to have combined the countercultural sixties and the achieving eighties into one social ethos." Hence, Bob Dylan meets Reaganomics.
Bourgeois, after all, means practical middle class living, working the corporate way of life, and paying down the mortgage. Bohemian signifies carefree and artsy-fartsy, more Jack Kerouac than Martha Stewart. Combine the two, and what you have is a mildly conservative hippie who owns enough shares in Ford Motor Company to pay the kid's tuition to Dartmouth, yet celebrates Kyoto's anti-carbon monoxide stance and Gore's push for Yugo-like CAFÉ standards for 8,000 lb. SUVs.
They are an educated lot, these Bobos, and education is their stepping-stone to the upper echelon of society. In Bobo Land, the aristocratic class doesn't come by way of the umbilical cord, as the genteel are no longer determined by genetic breeding, but by their Yale law degrees and Rhodes Scholar titles. The arts-and-croissant rank and filers are the nurturers, as Brookes calls them. The business-type folks are the predators. The two cultures intermingle; that is, the nurturers and the predators meet at an Ivy League college, they marry, then they appear on the wedding page of the New York Times, which is the ultimate sign of success.
The Bobo consumption habits are a bit peculiar. Their Decade of Gree-provided disposable income steers them to places like Crate & Barrel and FAO Schwartz. Three hundred-dollar goose down pillows are a near-requirement, as are the home cappuccino machines that resemble a Frankenstein contraption and churn away at Costa Rican organic beans. The simple has been replaced by the sophisticated. And no longer do name brand reputations determine their consumption habits; Bobos are more concerned with the company's social and environmental responsibility record.
The Bobo business life is often set in small, upscale communities, or as the author calls them, Latte Towns. "The ideal Latte Town", quips Brooks, "has a Swedish-style government, German-style pedestrian malls, Victorian houses, Native American crafts, Italian coffee, Berkeley human rights groups, and Beverly Hills income levels." Though business is about making money, Brookes points out that the Bobo businessperson may practice a sort of "enlightened capitalism", where making money is connected to some progressive cause, somewhere, whether it's John Mellencamp's farmer friends, Sting's rainforest, or third-world workers working without air-conditioning CFCs. This gives the countercultural entrepreneur a sense of honesty and feel-goodism, both of which are prerequisites for the success of the capitalist-radical fusion.
Bobo intellectuals are somewhat a variant of the entrepreneurs. Their bohemian nature and thoughts of grandiose accomplishments spur them onward. Though less cash conscious than their business brothers, they still tend to see that the grass is usually greener on the other side.
A Brookes jocularity is the Bobo intellectual crisis known as SIDS - Status-Income Disequilibrium. That is, "they spend their days in glory and their nights in mediocrity. At work they go off and give lectures - all eyes upon them - appear on TV and on NPR, chair meetings. All day long phone messages pile up on their desk - calls from rich or famous people seeking favors or attention - but at night they realize the bathroom needs cleaning so they have to pull out the Ajax. At work they are aristocrats, kings of the meritocracy, schmoozing with George Plimpton. At home they wonder if they can really afford a new car."
This is the essence of the Bobo intellectual - no matter how much green the two-income Bobo family seems to earn, it is never enough to compete with their cream of the crop companions. It means vacations at Disney World or Virginia Beach instead of the Swiss Alps.
The Bobo culture is busy raising 2.4 children apiece, and cultivates them differently. They have given up McGuffey Reader for Heather Has Two Mommies, and they have made sex a household word and dinnertime discussion. "It's not all chaos and amoralism," says Brookes. "What they are doing is weird and may be disgusting, but it has its own set of disciplines." Disciplined or not, this new Bohemian tolerance is questionable. They have become more tolerant of things deemed sordid in the past, but at the same time, they are also an intolerant, politically correct sort of bunch. So they're practicing sort of an intolerant tolerance, I suppose.
The Bobos are a people on the move. They move to wherever it is fashionable, and they live in whatever seems spiritual. An environmentally smart log cabin with the organic garden will do. Montana has become the champion state of free spirited Bobos, whereas the old bohemian wouldn't be caught dead in a state where right-wing mountain people collect gun racks and freeze-dried food.
A final, great shot taken by Brookes is the fad of intermeshing spiritual beliefs. Religion is no longer so strictly defined, as Boboism has reached out to all classes of spirituality, leaving one woman to "describe herself as a "Methodist Taoist Native Amnerican Quaker Russian Orthodox Buddhist Jew." Phew. Therefore, the Bobo religionist is no longer bound to the rigid confines of discerning religion. Like everything else, it's a hodge-podge.
Bobos in Paradise is engaging, crazy, and a phraseology jewel. Brookes has spelled out the suburban middle-class in appropriate terms. As you read, you'll recognize neighbors, family members, and maybe even a little bit of yourself.

When I read this book, I chuckled - after all, I live in San Francisco. But at the same time, there was a little bell going off in the back of my mind - hadn't I read something similar awhile back? As it happened, the book in question had just been reprinted. Jerrold Siegel's "Bohemian Paris" centers on the relationship between the bourgeois and the bohemian in mid-nineteenth century Paris. He discusses the popularity of "revolutionary" works of art among the middle classes, and the way that this reception changed both the meaning of the work and the artists' own view of their society. Siegel sees this cooption as being central to capitalism and its own intrinsic defense against violent revolution.
Has Brooks ever read Siegel? Possibly not - maybe he's just a keen observer of similar social dynamics. Nevertheless, anyone who takes "Bobos" seriously will want to add "Bohemian Paris" to their shopping cart.

In the pages of David Brooks' light-hearted look at the "new-money" upper class, you'll recognize people you know. Brooks has perfect pitch for the way they talk, the way they decorate their living and working environments, their vehicles, amusements and pre-occupations---in short, the life-style of the highly educated, newly rich, "bobos"---bourgeois bohemians.

Their "merit elite," mixing an unlikely blend of corporate capitalism with free-spirited hippiehood, produces wide-ranging cognitive dissonance. Brooks' perceptive eye duly records all, and presents it to the reader with a heavy dose of calculated wit. Since Brooks is a self-confessed bobo himself, the humor is not mocking but lightly ironic.

This entertaining chronicle of our time will make you laugh as you ponder just where your own lifestyle fits into the "bobo" establishment.

Okay, so the only thing you need to know is that the Baby Boomers got tired of being referred to as Yuppies (after all, they are no longer Young, are they?), with all the bad press related to this classification. So, instead of spending their money on BMWs, Guccis and glorifying the wonders of urban living, they became "BoBos" instead...Yukons and Land Rovers, Timberlines and Blunnies, and reinventing suburbia to become just like Bethesda, Maryland or Edina, Minnesota. And they attempt to justify it not by saying "greed is good" but by saying to themselves, hey, I shop for organic food to put into my Sub Zero in my subdivision McMansion or rehabbed city townhouse, so my ridiculous spending habits are okay. This author hasn't said anything really new about those over the age of 35; instead, he's just given selfish, overpriced behavior a new, catchy name that has nothing to do with real life or real environmentalism or real anthing outside of a real hefty money market account. Bourgeois, oui. Bohemian? Never.

I ordered this book because I read the sample pages online and they were both interesting and entertaining. I was a bit disappointed once I ordered the actual book. The beginning chapters were very good and met the expectations I had, but towards the end the book tended to drone on and become quite boring. I even ended up skipping pages because I just couldn't get motivated to finish. The author explains that he orginally started out writing short stories on this subject. I think this information could have stayed funny and interesting in a short story or article form, but the book was just too much. All and all I would still recommed it if you can borrow it from someone or get it from the library, but I wouldn't spend money on it.

If you are looking for a fun book, easy reading, and even not to feel obligated to read all the sections, well this is one. Brooks describes very sharlpy the changes that have and still are facing the different crowds of the society in the United States.
It shows you the fakeness in their behavior, how so much is done just because it is the cool thing to do, not what they really like doing. How the country have changed in the last years, and how the values have just disappeared even at the daily level.
Some examples are really funny, they are so true though they make you wonder even more about the foundations people are trying to accomplish.
I guess less knowledge, and more superficiliaty made it work up to now. Eliminate the intellectual group and everything will be just fine.
Read it, and wonder how the heck did all this happen..

In the last 24 hours have you: 1) Drank a cup of Starbucks coffee? 2) Worn a pair of hiking boots that cost more than $100, or 3) Eaten any organically grown food? If so, chances are that you're a Bobo. The Bobos, or Bourgeois Bohemians, are the moneyed and cultured elites who comprise today's establishment. As they assume a dominant role in the business world, the Bobos are bringing with them the artistic flair, cultural irreverence and social awareness that they - or their parents - experienced in the 1960s. Author David Brooks is to be commended for identifying this group, and tagging it with an appropriately deprecating nickname. We from getAbstract highly recommend this engaging, insightful - and let's face it- kind of embarrassing analysis of today's upper class.

Brooks points out how post-Boomers grasp counterculture values and thus have formed a conservative movement with liberal trappings. If you read between the lines, you see an updated version of an old adage, which is "Money corrupts, and absolute money corrupts absolutely." The book is thin because after the first forty pages, the ratio of content to jokes, banter, and anecdote goes shooting downward and thus while it's an easier read it becomes boring because it has no fact or discovery of greater plotline available to it. I liked this book because he points out how any group can become entrenched in its privileged position, but found it thin as mentioned, and am skeptical about his glib assurance that these people can somehow manage our future.

At the risk of repeating the valid criticisms I have skimmed here, I will attempt to summarize the major flaws of this very flawed book.
Brooks assumes that the Bobos at some point in their lives have shared counter cultural, radical, and creative ideas associated with bohemians. Is this the case, or are they merely tourists of the lifestyle? I am reminded of John Lennon's observation about "Day Trippers", the weekend bohemians of the 60s. B. would have us think that the bourgeois synthesized Bohemia into the Bobo, but the book does not provide the evidence for some such Hegelian process. Instead, he runs down a seemingly inexhaustible (and exhausting) list of their lifestyle choices, concentrating especially on their consumer habits, sometimes to humorous effect. Eventually, though, the act becomes tiresome, and he rather lamely attempts some serious analysis.
This is where the book falls flat, and the thud is deafening. If the Bobo had truly incorporated bohemian values into the upper class sensibility, we would not see them purchasing SUVs, for instance. These vehicles get terrible gas mileage, which is incompatible with the Bobos' supposed deep caring for the environment. Also, these expensive vehicles pose a danger to those less fortunate motorists who can only afford a small car. Such contradictions can be found elsewhere in the opening chapters (electricity-gobbling appliances, for instance); they should be kept in mind when the reader gets to the weak arguments of Bobo morality and spirituality in the later chapters.
B. claims that the Bobos are concerned with preservation of America's older neighborhoods, to save older structures and our heritage, yet the facts speak to an utter lack of concern of the Bobos when it comes to their own "needs." Witness the gentrification of the Mission District in San Francisco, which has forced the traditional Hispanic population out because of sky-high rents. There is a noticeable lack of mention of the lower classes in the book, in fact. The Bobo is depicted unintentionally as a classic elitist, with a narcissistic streak that would make the 70s "Me Decade" seem tame by comparison. Thus, the horrific reaction some readers might have when they discover that B. not only thinks the Bobos are a positive force of nature, but that he counts himself as one.
If B. were approaching the subject critically, he would undoubtedly have tackled the psychology of the Bobo, and why the fascination with bohemian culture. He never tackles this very key point; the possible issues of guilt and self-esteem, for instance. Or how about the Info Age obsession with research? Is this lifestyle optimized based on careful study of all the facts? Is the incorporation of the bohemian a sign of neurosis instead? Don't the descriptions of consumption sound like classic obsessive-compulsive disorder? How does the Bobo grapple with Bobo ethical questions, such as the dilemma posed by optimizing his lifestyle choice by buying the "best" coffee from a plantation that exploits its workers, against the "lesser" coffee that would be more politically correct? The more you ponder these contradictions, the more you are apt to recognize the absurdity of buying B.'s arguments.
B. later talks of the Bobo spiritual life, wherein they pick and choose freely from an ever-changing menu of religious beliefs. Again, the consumer approach to salvation. Yet the earlier chapters allow one to reach a different conclusion: that the real spiritual instinct has been supplanted by entertainment itself, in the form of food, gadgets, and popular culture that are considered superior and "hip". It is this obsessive approach to lifestyle that fills the void left by the decline of true religious commitment. Religion then becomes yet another item for research and eventual consumption.
As this is a conservative's project to convince us of the likability of the Bobo over previous elite classes, he distracts the reader from his true purpose: to celebrate the death of true bohemianism, by co-opting it and robbing it of its alternative world view, which stood in opposition to that of the global exploits of the bourgeois in the realms of commerce and politics. This is the core piece of bohemianism that the Bobo rejects, which makes the so-called synthesis impossible. A much, much better analysis of the Elites and their effect on the erosion of democracy worldwide is presented in Christopher Lasch's "The Revolt of the Elites," which is the work of a true intellectual, not the faux sort exemplified by David Brooks.

This book explains the contradictions of the new "upper class", which Brooks named Bobos, short for bourgeois bohemians and shows how they have combined the ethos of the eighties with the idealism of the sixties. The author displays a great sense of humor when he describes today's executive as having gone from SDS to CEO and from LSD to IPO. A neoconservative, Brooks celebrates this transformation and cites Cesar Grana's 1964 work, Bohemian versus Bourgeois, which describes the intellectuals' contempt for bourgeois culture in early 19th Century France. You may recall that Thorstein Veblen in his book, Theory of the Leisure Class, 1899, also used the satirical concept of conspicuous consumption to explain why people acquire goods for their status rather than for their utility. Since then, other writers have tried to do the same. However, Brooks, who is obviously one of them, is ambivalent about the Bobos' behavior and it is left for the reader to decide whether the Bobos are enlightened revolutionaries or revolutionaries who have sold out. It is ironic that having praised the virtues of Bobos' lifestyles, at the end Brooks seems to be afraid that "we are threatened with a new age of complacency". Are the Bobos exhausted already or are they shallow yuppies? Nevertheless, this book is indeed comic sociology worth reading.

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?

Despite the cutesy title and satiric cover art, this is a book that truly can't find its voice. Brooks bills Bobos In Pardise as "comic sociology" but his treatment of his subject matter is so uneven it left me wondering what he really intended. Trying to be both funny and serious, Brooks falls flat on his face and succeeds at neither.
The title and the description from the back cover led me to believe this book would be a satirical stab at the Bobo agenda: material excess and conspicuous consumption thinly veiled by hypocritical political correctness and environmentalism. (All those SUVs are sooo good for the environment!) What I got instead was a slobberingly reverential tribute to the very thing I expected to be satirized! What's worse, Brooks comes across as some sort of sociological, Bobo groupie, as if rubbing elbows with the new elite somehow makes him one of them.
What really bothered me is that for a work of alleged sociology, Brooks completely ignores the cultural and environmental impact Bobos are having: gentrification, suburban sprawl, endless strip malls peppered with pretentious coffee shops and overpriced kitchen gadget stores, just to name a few. He also conveniently overlooks the fact that Bobo culture is, essentially, the culture of beige, and that as Bobos continue to set the agenga, those of us who remain uncharmed by their bland tastes and entertainments have fewer and fewer options.

David Brooks is under the impression that we're living in a meritocracy (he uses the word about once per paragraph), when all signs point to something much closer to a plutocracy.
His defense -- ultimately that's what it amounts to -- of BOBOculture depends upon his readers' belief in this meritocracy. If you believe the most talented people rise to the top, rather than the wealthiest or those from the most influential families (think about President Bush), then you, like Brooks, can take comfort in the knowledge that, in spite of the silly idiosyncrasies of the ruling class, we're in good hands.
Brooks would have us believe that the American aristocracy is extinct, that the power brokers of this country no longer come from the old-moneyed elite. American blue blood has been indeed been diluted, but only a little. Only the trappings have changed. They drive different cars; they wear different clothes; they no longer promote themselves in the society pages. But they still attend the same schools and end up on the same (or equivalent) boards. Perhaps most significantly to Brooks, they support nobler causes, but a culture that disingenuously and hypocritically supports worthy causes is ultimately more dangerous than one that allows itself to be seen for what it is.
Brooks' defense is oily and dangerous. Fortunately it's also unfocussed and inarticulate. He steps on his own feet, wanders of on useless tangents and contradicts himself repeatedly. Intermittently through his confused prose, the truths he reveals are depressing ones, made more so by his attempt to pass them off as merely silly.

This is a decent work with a few rough spots. Brooks details the lifestyle of what is essentially what some sociologists call the "New Class"-that is, an educated elite which has grown to become the dominant social class in society, essentially supplanting the old monied aristocracy. The book is reasonably well-organized, and at times quite entertaining. In some of the middle portions of the book, particularly the section on Bobo intellectual life, Brooks does tend to needlessly stereotype, and his analysis tends to become more muddled, as his examples tend to become more exaggerated and less true to life. Probably the biggest flaw in the book is the failure of Brooks to realize that the Bobos are essentially Baby Boomers. The Bobo phenomenon is not quite the melding of the age-old bourgeois and bohemian cultures that Brooks makes it out to be. Rather, Bobo culture is more the manifestation of a type of outlook on life that we have seen before in American history, albeit without quite so much wealth involved. The Bobos are merely our most recent generation (namely, the Boom) to reflect idealism as its dominant mental outlook, unlike, say, Generation X, which tends toward a pragmatic, almost survivalist, view. Here, Brooks could have benefited by looking more closely at William Strauss' and Neil Howe's Generations, where a case is made that American history has cyclical aspects, with essentially four generational types moving across the historical stage, each with its own distinct tenor and view of life. What Brooks has essentially done is to provide us with multiple cameos of one of those generations, the Baby Boom, and show how it has come to terms with its early idealism (primarily expressed in the 1960s)as well as its younger-middle life stage (the 1980s) to produce a different type of American culture in the 1990s and beyond.

In this book, which could have been aptly subtitled "The Gospel According to Super-Sham", David Brooks has coined the term Bobos for what calls "Bourgeois Bohemians" and he takes us to their "Paradise", one of Philadelphia's upscale suburbs, to show us what makes Bobos tick.

Brooks takes us on an extended "Brooks Tour" there, so that we can observe how the new upper class lives. Or perhaps we might better say, the uppity class, as in those who are so busy are fooling themselves into thinking they are of the upper class that they don't see how silly they really are. Who knows if the study can be classified as scholarly or not? Then again, who cares?

Brook's descriptions of modern day Wayne, Pennsylvania, and what makes it tic are finely drawn and hilariously funny; he must spend lots of time rubbing elbows there. The author tweaks the noses of the nouveau Main Line, poking fun of their manners and mores, their convictions and concerns, their assumptions and aspirations. It seems, in the end, that their approach to life is, "Well, we cannot all be born to the purple like the Biddles, my dear, and if we cannot then let's go for faux!"

This is the best thing since Katherine Hepburn did her Tracey Lord lockjaw send up of the typical Mainline debutante in the classic film "The Philadelphia Story". Mr. Brooks has all of the faux-ny-ness dead on. He must have observed quite a number of Wayne Bobos traipsing in and out of the boutiques and shoppes, in order to describe what can only be called busily misguided human beings.

Types who fit this mold perfectly not only put high stock in appearances, labels and show, they also believe that Paoli is the last gasp of suburban bliss beyond which all points "somewhere west of here" are a déclassé blur .

If those who read this book believe that, then, of course, they are right at home among the Bobos!

I was prepared to like this book, but what I found was not a satire of "Bobos" but a smug apology for them. Other ruling classes have depended on money or titles for their legitimacy, but Brooks really believes that the Bobos earned their place by being so much smarter than everyone else--as if accidents like chance, inherited wealth, or geography played no part. (The book is a paean to the east and Left coasts; the fly-over states are not important, except for a side-trip to gentrified Montana.) Brooks depicts the Bobos as sitting pretty for now: but we have not been able to repeal nature, or history. Events don't stand still, and eventually America will be faced with challenges to replace those of the Cold War. Come the next Great Depression or the next war this book will look pretty silly. And our grandchildren may look on us the way the post World War I generation looked on the complacent Victorians--as naive, unprepared, and oh so out of touch with the real world most people live in.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. While it was not "deep" and perhaps offered an ill-mixed "serio-comic sociology", it introduced some important issues. In particular, note the contrasts of the "bobo sensibilitities" of those bobos who Have Money (investment bankers, dot-commer, etc) vs. those bobos who Don't Have So Much Money (the real "bohemians", the academics, etc.) What is the role of money in all this, anyway? Do you have to Be Rich/Want to Be Rich to be a "Bo?" Are we just aging 60's-70's (80's?) professionals? I'd like a more serious approach to these questions, a "sequel" to what Brooks began. It reflects some significant questions about values, personal choices, media influences, etc. that deserve more serious discussion.

David Brooks is a TV pundit/panelist as well as an experienced newspaper editor. His coinage of "bobo" reminds me of Tom Wolfe's "boho". There is much to disagree with in this book (as many reviewers on this page attest) -- but there is much incisive observation in it, as most blurbs from professional blurbers maintain. My reading of it was well worth my time and effort, confirming in my mind that the "new upper class of intellectuals" are rootless gypsies, ever seeking fresh opportunities to squander our collective resources (their "green" facade notwithstanding) with the conviction that their college educations and gross incomes entitle them to do so.
Brooks declares himself to be a proud member of the bobo (bohemian bourgeoisie) upper class, maintaining that the bobo life is great, and the bobo-ization of the U.S. is a good thing. But he sounds a note of regret, too. Small wonder. He nails a burgeoning "booboisie" (pace H. L. Mencken) as devoid of community and inner peace. He's a good writer (with some Russell-Baker-style laughs) for the nonce, anyway -- David Brooks -- give this inexpensive book a try.

When considering Mr. David Brooks' Bobos in Paradise, it is best to begin with a very important fact - Mr. Brooks considers himself a "bobo." He is very forthcoming with this important bit of information. With it, the reader is advised from the start that although this will be a somewhat comical and occasionally insightful work of social - I don't particularly like to use the word here but there seems no other choice - criticism, it will not be an icon shattering indictment of the society nor will it investigate any topic to a degree that might make the present paradigm unstable. In a way, Mr. Brooks has proven the entire thesis of the book - that affluence, wealth, and the things they can obtain have replaced intellectual and moral substance in America, that the new affluent class has a taste for the superfluous over the substantive (although they may protest to the contrary), and that their influence has driven the direction of contemporary society - by this very point. The question then becomes whether to congratulate him for this keen bit of ironic genius or condemn him for not being able to see beyond the end of his nose.
The structure of the book is quite simple: Mr. Brooks first defines what he perceives as a distinct social group and then analyzes it. "Bobos" or Bourgeois Bohemians are explained to be the product of the sixties "counter-culture" combined with the eighties orgy of materialism. In a sense, the book condemns the idealism of the sixties being corrupted by easily gotten gains. However, the condemnation is not very strong, something along the lines of "darn you, darn you all to heck." With that, Mr. Brooks goes gleefully on not to criticize so much as to display the effects of this odd social melange. It may be argued that too criticize to harshly, Mr. Brooks risks bringing down cries of "hypocrite!" upon his head, thus he could be expected to do no more than depict what he observes. This goes directly back to the original question of this review - is the book a product of irony or short sightedness? The reader is left to decide the matter.
Some of Mr. Brooks' depictions are interesting, others simply too obvious to be of any importance. Together, they paint a society enthralled by its own success. Occasionally, one will find something not previously known, as in the section on "bobos" and religion. I have for some time observed the rise of the shopping mall mentality in the area of American religion, but I had not considered all the manifestations of this trend that were found and described by Mr. Brooks. Needless to say, it enlarged my picture of the whole but it did not improve my impression of it.
One feature the book does have, although it will disturb many readers, is the ability to point an accusing finger back to the reader. It is difficult not to read this book and find oneself among the darned. If you are college educated and between the ages of 35 to 55, something in this book will apply to you. If you are honest, you will recognize it and perhaps mend your ways, for no social quality described in this book is commendable in any person. If you find nothing, you were either not paying attention or are too self absorbed to notice, a true "bobo."

David Brooks hits his target -- and often -- in this insightful, often very funny book. His description of today's educated elite is dead-on, capturing our need to reconcile historical extremes into a comforting, soft-edged world. Through deft observation, Brooks manages to place an entire generation into perspective.
This is a great book to give to a Baby Boomer, Starbuck's addicted friend. Especially if your friend is in marketing, advertising, politics, sales or owns a business. The insights into today's most active customers will more than justify the cost of the book. Plus, as an added bonus, the book, which is apolitical, helps explain how a George W. Bush could be elected President.

This book is thoroughly enjoyable, even if getting repetetive towards the end. The fact that it is drawn mostly from prior writings by the author would explain why some pages are much stronger than others. Topics on Leisure and Consumption were hilarious and right on the mark. Topics on Spirituality and Sex seemed less inspired, and overall seemed more typical of the whole society instead of just the Boho subclass.
I also felt that demise of the WASP was greatly exaggerated. Having gone to school with many future "Bobos" and many present and future WASPs I cannot agree with some of the conclusions the author makes on the subject. Overall however, I found it a very good read. I highly recommend it for an evening or train ride read, and it makes a great gift to a Bobo you know and love.

Brooks' caricature of a bobo: a female jogger in skin tight spandex shorts and sport bra, running her heart out in her underwear. "Dionysius, the god of abandon, has been reconciled with Prometheus, the god of work." (p. 199)

In the 60s, bohemians were artists living a free-for-all existence. Today, everything is so purposeful. Brooks thinks we are living through the most abstemious era since Prohibition, maybe in American history.

The bobo is busily engaged in the art of self creation. No, make that self-deception. She's not likely to see her hypocrisy. But give her this: she is far healthier and success oriented than yesterday's bohemian.

Leave it to yet another conservative pundit and reporter for The Wall Street Journal to write a tongue-in-cheek "assessment" of the morays of pop culture. Sure, we all like to think we know how conservatives define culture. Yet the American mass media has done an abysmal job reporting and interpreting the deeper meanings of conservatism's allegiance to what we consider "high culture." If we also stop to recall that "pop" literally overwhelmed "high culture" during the so-called "countercultural rebellion" of the 1960s, conservatism's latest "trip"--i.e. to revaluate and reinterpret its rival's intentions and relevance--isn't all that hard to fathom. Besides, didn't the uberconservative powers-that-be announce to the world three years ago that they were going to turn away from the political sphere and begin to subvert the current culture?
Lucky for us, David Brooks' "Bobos In Paradise" is at least an entertaining hatchet job that seems to be an attempt at getting what's out of the box back into it. Purporting to be a serious work of social criticism--which it isn't, not by a long shot--Brooks literally stumbles all over the minefield of stereotypic thinking he's laid for his readers. Regardless of smatterings of validity hidden within one one-liner after another, Brooks' comprehension of popular culture's effects on adult society and the world of the worker-drones is too superficial and too convoluted to be taken all that seriously.
For example, Brooks describes a concept--metis--allegedly taken from the ancient Greek by a Yale anthropologist named James C. Scott, to describe the Bobo approach to work. Though Brooks claims it means "practical knowledge, cunning or having a knack for something", anyone can look into the Oxford English Dictionary and learn that "metis" actually means "crossbreed, particularly offsprings of whites and Native Americans, as in mestizo." Which is a funny and telling comparison between two concepts. But...is it a joke? And, if it really is one, is it funny? Besides, a look into any good faculty directory reveals that the only "James Scott" at Yale is a political science professor. A long, long way from anthropology.
When Brooks begins to describe the so-called spiritual aspects of "Bobo culture," he marvels at a morality that is "modest in its ambitions and quiet in its proclamations, not seeking to transform the entire world but to make a difference where it can." Further describing this tendency to look at morality in personal terms, he does note that many so-called Bobos tend towards ambivalence when confronted by moral paradox or ethical conflict. But he's quick to defend their solution: Bobos follow the path of least resistance. Which, it seems, is a nice way of telling us that the so-called Bobo culture is comprised of a bunch of cowardly sissies who are too self-centered to act upon their fancied superiority.
According to Brooks, politically speaking, Bobos are "unifiers" not "dividers"--which, of course, puts them right into the category of George W. Bush, the first American Anti-President to wage a class war from the top down. Which, as a general statement, is simple co-optation, part of a widely flung campaign to declare the culture wars of the last three decades over and won--a tactic that would thereby brand anyone who continues to wage it from undesirable quarters "an agitator".
What's most troubling about "Bobos In Paradise" is its benchmark misconnection: Are we really seeing a meld of the so-called American bourgeoise and the so-called bohemians? That's a pretty questionable assertion. More likely, we're seeing the results of a long-invisible counterculture's rising popularity and its consequent marketing by Madison Avenue. And as for the Bobos themselves? In all probability, they're merely a groundswell of well-meaning men and women who are rich enough to make themselves look and seem like the visible exponents of some sort of new wave in American culture when, in reality, they're simply involved with changing their image and their "market signature." Possessing the trappings--read: products--of a counterculture that has staunchly guarded its non-political nature for nearly 20 years, the people Brooks identifies as Bobos are merely adult versions of the predators who took the 1960s counterculture to the bank. Anyone who has seen what is happening in Austin, Texas--as the dot-com.ers and real estate developers are raising the financial roof on a local and richly spirited counterculture that has been in business since the 1960s--will know exactly what Boboism really means.
Perhaps Brooks would have been more accurate had he dubbed his darlings "Buboes." As in plague-welts.
Therefore, read this one at your own risk. In other words, this time try not to believe everything you read. "Bobos In Paradise" is a market ploy that is helping Madison Avenue create and widen a new market while beheadding another appendage of the hydra of authentic culture in America. And, you know what? That's even funnier than the first time they did it to us.

Although cultural studies have abounded within academia since the 1970s, many sociologists and others have been concerned that the focus of culture, particularly the kind of atheoretical popular cultural analyses written by observers like David Brooks, will further our increasing myopia on the matter of social class. While I enjoyed reading Brooks' new book, and found myself smiling throughout, I was simulaneously annoyed with his casual (perhaps intentional) misrepresentation of the powerful class interests that continue to exist, and rule, in contemporary America. The Bobos are merely the latest manifestation of that class segment described at the turn of the last century by Max Weber as the propertyless intelligentsia. This highly educated segment of the upper-middle class (not the upper-class as Brooks contends) has always been concerned with status and prestige, and with ensuring that all outward signs of one's self contribute to the "right" display. The term, "bobo," is catchy but misleading since there is hardly anything bohemian about this particular class segment, but much that is simply bourgeois. Brooks' belief that this is a new phenomenon, driven by the confluence of the baby-boomers with trends toward egalitarianism and global capitalism, actually supports one his claims concerning intellectual life today: one makes oneself better known by championing a demonstrably wrong thesis as long as it's an interesting one. One quick final comment: the weakest parts of the book are those sections where Brooks confronts those areas of life where he is least adept, e.g., the Seattle outdoors scene or the challenging adventure-vacation phenomenon. In these sections, the tone of Brooks writing assumes a tone of mild contempt that strives to pass as self-mockery. In sum, this book makes for a nice, light read, something that is quite in keeping with midcult demand for clever reading without having to work through anything too serious.

This book looks at the affects of universal education and the universe it has brought, from a pop culture point of view. I love the opening chapter where Brooks does an analysis of New York Times wedding pages over the decades. His description of the Bourgeois over time is funny with just a touch of affection. His writing picks up the essence of Bohemians so the reader gets the sense of their personal meanness. One wishes this part of the book could go on, but it is just a pier to launch his main idea - the creation of Bobos, the Bourgeois Bohemian. This is the person who defies labels of conservative or liberal, instead life-smithing a unique, undefinable reconciliation of the two lifestyles. Intended to celebrate the individual, Bobodom is sometimes irritatingly conforming. We have the democratization of higher education (colleges and universities at the undergrad and grad level, as well as professional schools, i.e. doctors and lawyers) to thank for this.
Brooks has to convince us Bobos exist and he accomplishes the task. From there he goes on to describe Bobo behavior and codes of conduct in various realms of life - consumption (noteworthy to mention this is the first evaluative chapter of the book), work, play, sex and the spirit. He hilariously finds the herd mentality in all this individuality. I thought his analysis of Bobo consumption was alittle too bitter and condemning. He also dwells on it too much. I expected more from the chapter on work, but he hits that nail by identifying the transformation of a job from a means to survive to a means of self expression. Brooks has a wholly white, male point of view, however. Some of his application misses the mark entirely because of his perspective. Americans of color do NOT fit the context Brooks creates for Bobo behavior. Believe me, they are definitely still Bobos. Finally, I thought the book was on track when I least expected it - in the chapter on spirituality. The biggest missing chapter in the book was on family. There are some thoughts tucked into various parts of other chapters. But, Bobos are raising kids and it occupies a sizable chuck of their lives. That is why we have SUV's, baby joggers and parent fights at Little League sporting events. What are these Gen-Y's like? because Bobo attitudes towards parenting and family life are not the same as the World War II Generation. I guess that's the topic of the next book.

What the heck is a "Bobo," you ask? And why should you care? Well, no need to look any further; because David Brooks has all the answers for you right here in his book, "Bobos in Paradise," each chapter packed with a seemingly unending stream of witty (and mostly funny, some hilarious) one-liners from a leading Compassionate Conservative Comic Commentator. And certainly there's enough material here to keep several stand-up comedians in business for years. For instance, Brooks' description of the contortions which Bobos put themselves through in an attempt to show that they don't really MEAN to make gobs of money, they're just "creators" who just so "happen" to be insanely successful. Or, his hilarious lessons on "how to be an intellectual giant" (and, ultimately, get on TV, because "those who are not on television find their lives are without meaning"). And much more....
In sum, "Bobos" are the synthesis, in the quasi-Hegelian sense, of the bourgeoisie (the "thesis") and the bohemians (the "antithesis"). So, according to Brooks, we appear to have reached what Frances Fukayama might call "The End of History," the ultimate synthesis and triumph of liberal democracy (highlights include moderation, civility, material success, and peaceful coexistence). And Brooks gives us a fascinating historical synopsis as to how this came to pass. Very interesting stuff, no doubt, but all this leaves ME a little nostalgiac for the day when at least SOME people actually cared PASSIONIATELY about things - art, ideas, culture, politics, the environment, whatever! Now, it's all about muddling differences, Clinton's "triangulating," reconciling seeming oxymorons (i.e, Dubyah's "compassionate conservativism"), and taking care at all times to be PC and not offend anyone. And heaven forbid that anyone be a true PARTISAN (i.e., someone who actually BELIEVES in something and is even willing to fight for it!).
A side point: I find it interesting that Brooks - the uberBobo - admires Jane Jacobs ("The Death and Life of Great American Cities") so much, since Jacobs celebrated a thriving URBAN ecosystem as the ideal habitat for humans, while the natural habitat of the Bobos is undoubtedly suburbia, with its soulless subdivisions, "bowling alone" social breakdown and alienation, ugly "big-box" stores, shopping malls, soccer moms, SUVs and minivans. According to David Brooks, THIS (yay, sprawl!) is (apparently) Paradise, although it's not clear how he reconciles this with his admiration for Jacobs. (But Bobos are, if nothing else, good at reconciling things!)
In fact, it's not clear how Brooks - or any Bobo, for that matter - can reconcile many of the things discussed in this book. How about the seemingly irreconcilable values of social justice on the one hand, and laissez faire capitalism on the other? Or the values of rootedness/community/faith vs. mobility/personal autonomy/free choice? Or how about being "green" while also owning an energy-inefficient, resource-gobbling "McMansion," a sub-zero refrigerator, an oven that could roast an ox in 10 seconds flat, and a pollution-spewing SUV? Or spending your days working to make money, while not losing your artistic, bohemian soul? Or having fun "responsibly." Or enjoying your demanding, enriching, fulfilling, painful vacation (without, of course, being a "travel snob")? Or dozens of other seemingly irreconcilable values? Good luck!
Let me just mention a few other criticisms of this book. First, although David Brooks deluges us with anecdotal evidence, fascinating and entertaining though it is, I don't see any hard facts and statistics (or even interviews) that provide EVIDENCE to back up his arguments. I'm not saying that Brooks is wrong in his observations or conclusions, but as an economist (and scientist at heart), I would have liked to have seen some serious sociological statistics here. Second, although there's little doubt that David Brooks has got the habits of his friends, and friends' friends, down cold, what about the rest of the world? Are the masses of "middle America" (not to speak of the Third World!) really Bobos in any significant numbers? And isn't there a backlash to all this (i.e., the WTO protests in Seattle)? Third, the tone of this book is somewhat confusing. Is this all supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, or is it supposed to be serious sociology? Does David Brooks really think Bobos are more subjects of mockery and comic one-liners, or are they the great hope of mankind? Or both at the same time? It would be nice to know what Brooks REALLY thinks about Bobos.
But maybe that's the whole point here; namely, in Bobo-land, noone ever really thinks ANYTHING definitively (so someone can actually claim to be a "Methodist Taoist Native American Quaker Russian Orthodox Buddhist Jew" - ohhhhh). In the world of the Bobos, it seems that everything is dumbed/watered/blanded down, made as unthreatening as possible ("have a nice day, come again!"), compromised, "go along get along." As Brooks himself admits, this is NOT exactly exciting or romantic stuff we're talking about here. So, after finishing this book, I couldn't quite decide whether I agreed more with Stendhal (commenting on the bourgeoisie), that Bobos make me want to "weep and vomit at the same time," or with David Brooks, who believes that "it's good to live in a Bobo world," and also that Bobos have the potential to lead us "into another golden age." Anyway, since Bobos are powerful and apparently may be here to stay for a while, I recommend that you read this generally well-written, witty, engaging book, and decide for yourself!

This book is a comic look at sociology. David Brooks is one of my favorite conservative thinkers -- he appears during the News Hour on Public TV every Friday night at 6:00 pm. Actually this book is more about Social Psychology than it is about "Comic Sociology".

Sociology investigates how people act in groups.

Social Psychology investigates how people develop as a result of the social influences around them.

This is a funny book about how members of the "Upper Crust" in America are brought up, get married and develop throughout their lives. It's a light funny but scholarly work. The part I like best was a comparison of wedding announcements from 50 years ago and today.

If you like to think about how the Yuppies got this way, you'll love this book.

I saw Brooks interviewed on C-Span and was perplexed and disappointed as he himself turned out to be a bobo. You know; a nerd. I think he is overintellectualizing what is merely yuppie nerds and their offspring.
As is the case with most people, these yups are a product of the established order in which people are indoctinated via governments, schools, TV that they need foolish products. They are then sold these foolish products. They eventually realize unfulfillment and move on to the next product. Their minds have been programmed to be recievers of advertisements via the media.
By the way, Brooks can call himself whatever he likes; the fact is he is establishment all the way.
I live in one of the Yuppiest towns in the entire world and see them everyday. Yuppies frowning while wearing sunglasses on cloudy days, honking as they plow through the weary streets with their Lexis SUVS, on their way to downtown Westport in hopes of a glimpse of Paul Newman. That gives me an idea, I should write a book on it. If I only had the connections Brooks had...darn. ;)
I strongly recommend Thomas Sowell for intelligent commentary on social trends rather than what amounts to Brooks' partially disguised autobiography.

We don't need any more information that shows that we live in a puerile culture, a land where teen mentality dominates, where most adults are lulled by the omnipresent media into "arrested development" as we say in Psychiatry. David Brooks' "Bobos in Paradise" is a thinly veiled continuation of this trend, only his paradigm is sociology, and of the most superficial variety. In my opinion, there are plenty of true bohemians out there who are in no way middle-class, and vice versa. Where the two (Bo and Bo) overlap, it is only in the most surface ways, which is what this book is all about: surfaces. superficialities. I don't recommend this for anyone who craves depth-in-reading.

Brooks is certainly insightful, and has captured the essence of this emerging group very well (and humorously). He may let Bobos off the hook too easily though. Though Bobos have supposedly well-intentioned motives regarding what they buy and how it is made, are they any different than yuppies in that they are essentially consumption oriented? If you walk into any Bobo store, you quickly notice the expansive product line (you can buy everything but groceries in Restoration Hardware, for instance), and the stores would gladly have you buy one of everything, though little of it is actually practical. And like the stores, most Bobo homes seem similarly cluttered with high end bric-a-brac, useless baubles, etc...Is this a great improvement?
So Brooks tells us in great detail what Bobo's buy. But do they give to charities? Do they dirty their hands with volunteer work? Are they different than other groups in this regard? Or do they just travel and consume?
I'd also like to hear about Bobos' relationship with the arts. Are their tastes likely to greatly influence the arts, or contribute to the enhancement or decline of the arts?

David Brooks is a born lickspittle. He clearly enjoys flirting with his target audience, teasing them just enough to get their attention, then flattering them for pages. It's not very well done--even his title, the abbreviation "Bobo," makes you wince, because the "bo" in "bourgeois" isn't pronounced like the "bo" in "bohemian." The mismatch is symptomatic: Brooks' readers are far more bourgeois than they are bohemian. They are the same world-weary Eastern crowd to which the New Yorker has pandered lo, these many decades, and Brooks feeds them the same adoring banter they've come to expect. But what vile taste they and their little evangelist reveal! How horrible these little lives of furniture-pedantry! Two careers and a high-strung child who'll acquire new affectations every year, til she winds up spending her trust fund on therapy--that's Paradise? What a wretched paradise! No wonder they need this groveller to tell them how happy they are, how wonderful, for two hundred craven pages!

The world of the "Bourgeois Bohemian" (or "bobo"-a term the author has presumably coined in order to sell books) is one of obsessive over-achievement colored by a desire to be spiritually above and beyond the hoi polloi of the more typical American vulgar population.
From the outset, author David Brooks makes it very clear that he considers himself to be part of this insidious clique. And true to his admission that this group is a self-depracating one, he pokes some good fun at them as well. That being said, perhaps readers can find it in their stomachs to complete the book.
There's a brief historical explanation for the evolution of these people, which is actually quite good. It may not be the most sociologically correct presentation of facts, but it's certainly hard to argue against the presence and influence they have among us today.
Don't expect much empirical or even PhD-type sociological diatribe here. It's a very lite read and not all too meaty or intellectual. But the author's observations are fairly convincing, if not altogether obvious. Most of the book is spent detailing examples of the materialistic behavior and spending habits of bobos.
What Brooks totally fails to convince me of is the notion that this clique is in any way, shape or form "Bohemian." They only wish! The bobo group he aptly describes is a consumer group who may spend $1,000 on mountain climbing gear to wear to work without ever actually climbing a mountain. Or maybe that they travel off the beaten path in their $50,000 SUV. Or that they tend to disdain pleasures of the flesh which don't further their status as a Renaissance person. At one point, he notes how bobos increasingly shun the moralistic views of a religious figures, but are quick to shame anyone who violates the sacred health codes of our day (e.g. a pregnant woman who smokes). More hilariously, he notes how bobos don't "have" orgasms, they "achieve" them. All fun things must be done seriously-from sex to traveling to mountain climbing to skateboarding-and anyone who doesn't take them seriously taints their sacred cows.
What in the world is "Bohemian" about that? I always thought Bohemians were poor, struggling, immoral and creative.
By the time you're finished reading this silly book, you will probably be convinced -- as I was -- that bobos are simply the latest version of the yuppie. They are over-achieving, free-spending, self-righteous and imposing. Sure, they love to spend tons of money on a very contrived Bohemian "style" and attempt to achieve some sort of insight that is part of the rebellious culture, but they are about as "Bohemian" as a $4 latte served at a new age coffee shop with furniture that has been factory antiqued just two months prior.
"Yuppies in Paradise" wouldn't have sold as many books though.

This witty book-- challenging in its compilation of observations about our daily lives, shallow in that it ignores so much of modern America -- frequently made me cringe. I easily recognized myself (late forties, African American, PhD, Oberlin... you get the idea) in every chapter and loved the way the author crafted the language to present a portrait at once incisive, critical, but affectionate. We Baby Boomers have much to be grateful for, much to be held accountable for, but nothing to apologize for. In every latte-laced chapter, Brooks probes more deftly into turn-of-the-century U.S. culture and mores and does not take a wrong turn. This is an easy read, an adventurous excercise, and a sparklingly clear mirror held up to our generation.

When I read "Bobos in Paradise" for the very first time I was in the USA visiting some academic colleagues.
In those days, there was the terrible attack on America and every person I met was shocked and frightened by what happened and might still happen. Every American I met was afraid of thinking in long terms and lived day by day. Reading David Brooks' book and talking to these people about it, it was a great chance to let people think of America's emerging social and cultural trends, of better life styles. Talking about this book , these people might play with me imagining their future , their ideal life. Although Bobos do not like wide ,long term plans ,in those days ,to project the future was the wisest thing they could do. As a European, I grew up in a continent where terrorism is a very frequent ,undesired guest . As an Italian, I grew up in the civil war years ( 1970ies) between the State and the Red Brigades and in the specific of my hometown, Bologna, its railway station was practically destroyed by a bomb and several people died on August 2nd 1980.
Bobos in Italy do not exist the way they are described by David Brooks' amazing book. We have some people called cathocommunists who try to integrate the catholic -capitalistic Italian tradition with the radical socialist -profoundly communist - left wing tradition. These integration process already began in the 1950ies and in the 1970ies Italy was the only western country with a poerful Communist Party: it was the second biggest with about 33% after the Christian Democrats with about 35% of the votes.
This kind of dialectical process is similar to the one which tries to integrate the bourgeois and the bohemian life styles but the cathocommunist and the Bobo have deeply different visions of life.
Genuine Bobos in Italy are rather rare ,maybe you can find them among those Italians who have intellectual jobs (the nurterers in David Brooks words) and spend most of their time abroad or collaborating with Us or German knowledge -based institutions such as universities or publishers.
When I read the book, I suddenly realized I am tendentially a Bobo. I share several life choices with Bobos For example, I completely subscribe the Bobos' desire to integrate spiritual, life, intellectual life and pragmatic attitude towards a bourgeois wealth.The Bobos live a glocal cosmopolitanism, that is they have profound local roots(not necessarily in historical terms. Rather they are rooted in their favorite friends, bookstore, café ,fitness center ecc. in the same neighborhood and,possibly,at foot distance) and, at the same time, they travel and interact (both physically and mentally using the web) globally.
They believe in meritocracy and in "divine" cvs and I agree with them.
Doing the job they love, developing socially useful and sensitive projects and improving their intellectual brainpower, the Bobos incidentally earn huge amounts of money although they often are SID affected, as David Brooks writes in his superb, sociologically comic prose. A Bobo is an independent spirit who loves to self organize his/her schedule and plans and, as a meritocrat, s/he considers social insecurity as a strength to improve his/her performances.
As s/he integrates bourgeois and bohemian ideas, the Bobo does only purposeful,useful,constructive things and ,first of all, s/he creates new information-based meaning in his/her own life, just like the author describes in his beautiful pages about Bobos and sex.
The Bobos' life style develops harmony between bohemian intellectual creativity and bourgeois business pragmatism and this integration transforms everything, especially money, into soul.
The Bobo canceled the border between job and play, work and leisure. If you really love what you do this difference is meaningless and life becomes an extended hobby.
For a Bobo, business is a great chance to create social communities and they are culturally founded on metis.I completely agree with Bobos' vision of spirituality: its a search for transcendence through individual spiritual autonomy as Bobos do not trust deference and obedience logics. Integrating individual autonomy and social community is a wise attitude toward life but the wisest thing is to be aware that in case of contradictions the former would prevail on the latter.
When I finished to read "Bobos in Paradise", I began to take a look around and I am still searching on the internet if I could find Bobos' virtual communities and clubs to create new meaning and new metis among us Bobos including those who live in relatively boboless countries. That's a crucial point for Bobos' social sensitivity: please help the boboless countries to develop bobolly!
Andrea Pitasi

After succumbing to the hype and purchasing this book, it became a diversion that lasted the better part of a month. The book often served as a bedtime tranquilizer for me. I found Brooks' style of writing overly pedantic and at times downright dry, but always filled with razor sharp wit. As a self-annointed sufi for the educated elite, he takes it upon himself to bash all of my personal proclivities from nubby breads to utilitarian pleasure travel to exotic locales. My lingering question...What's so bad about using academic supremacy as currency in the new world order?
A worthwhile read, but only if you have the patience to plow through overripe metaphors in search of clever gems of social commentary. Not unlike the Barney's warehouse sale.

This was a really good book, I had to read it for my History of the US since 1945 class, it's funny and rings true in many aspects of this culture that I would fit my parents into, for the most part. But it was published in 2000, and we all know a lot has changed since then. For instance, he claims that talking about foreign affairs is a taboo --- and that people basically aren't partisan (as far as the BOBOS go). I think he's wrong in both regards, and I think it would be interesting for him to update his book with a post-sept. 11 edition.

Just what we need, a "scholarly" look at the bourgeois bohemians, or Bobo for short. It is hard to read this book without becoming increasingly irritated by the self congratulatory tone of the book. It contains a brief and interesting history of the bourgeois and bohemian beginnings in the United States. As it approaches present time, it becomes tedious and tiresome. Do we really care how conflicting it can be to choose the best of food, clothing, or even jobs? I don't. What's the point of the extended foray into the elite indulging in S&M and leather, no matter how earnest and sincere? I agree with another reader that the best parts are when Brooks touches on the drive to have the best or the professional model of something and his references to latte towns. All in all it is a tedious and irritating self congratulatory read that this OWUC (Overworked Underclass) female can do without! I donated my copy to the library.

Brooks starts strong then goes off on many tangents in an attempt to make this a comprehensive look at the Bobo phenomenon. The first pages are priceless: his style is witty, aphoristic, merciless and hilarious in appraising the Boomers who have come out on top (materially). They were long overdue for such a withering attack.
Then the tone abruptly changes to one of earnest analysis when dealing with the Bobo corporate style. At this point I thought I was reading a chapter from some management guru a la Tom Peters. Brooks recovers the wicked invective when dealing with Bobo buying habits and wretched excess, then ends on a hopeful note.
Over the course of writing "Bobos" Brooks may have come to the realization that he himself is one and they had better start taking a leadership role on the planet, instead of deferring the inevitable through self-actualization programs and the acquisition of more adult toys. He sets out to indict a generation and ends up saying "Bobos, you gotta love 'em".

The book's premise is interesting but fraught with problems. Brooks describes and contemplates how two historically antipodal groups, Bohemians and the Bourgeoisie, have suddenly converged. While I will not devote this review to a criticism of Brooks' misguided historicism, ideological prejudices, or lack of theoretical rigueur, I will offer a mere, but I think revealing, example of the book's potential problems: a critique of the foundational elements of Brooks' premise. Bohemians and the Bourgeoisie are not and have never been conceptually equivalent categories. The Bourgeoisie are a class whereas Bohemians, while having a (historically variable) class character, are not a class, but a sub-culture. Cultures are autonomous entities that have (mutually deterministic) correspondences/relations/affiliations with class formations. These correspondence are always realigning and being renegotiated. When one considers these fundamental theoretical premises, Brooks' supposedly unique observation no longer seems surprising. There are, though, important and difficult questions that his observation inspires --- one, being, WHY at this particular moment do we see this alignment of bohemian cultural practices with the bourgeois class formation and the capitalist mode of production. I think that Brook's consideration of this question, as well as others, is too cursory and not theoretically sophisticated enough.
Nevertheless, I applaud the author for the core of his observations. Plus, he has a real talent for wit and neologisms.
There is a real need for Brooks or (preferably) someone else to follow this with a sophisticated and theoretically rigorous account of the BOBO phenomenon. I suspect that within the literature of the academy one might already find these types of accounts of the BOBO phenomena. I would appreciate any references to this literature or to sociological or cultural theory that might be useful to an advanced study of the BOBO phenomenon. Email any such information to [email protected]

A funny, and biting, look into how hippie-era bohemians have morphed their youthful, anti-establishment ideals into a new social framework as they have matured. With the onset of the information age, these Bobos have assumed power in business, politics, and religion, reconciling their lifestyle choices along the way.

David Brooks, who ascribes himself to the Bobo class, delivers a book that is gratified with the accomplishments of Bobo culture, critical of its flaws, and hopeful for its future. While critics may point this out as an attempt play both sides of the issue, it is representative of the compromises made a Bobo individual.

Avid readers are sure to self-identify with many of the observations in this book. Your head will nod along in agreement with the passages. At times you'll chuckle, while silently worrying about crass trivialities. But as you sort through the implications, you'll realize that Bobo culture is not too bad.

I have been attempting to read this book for the past three weeks, and have had an inordinately difficult time engaging with the author's premises and text.

I suggest that if you don't belong to the bobo class and aren't interested in how it thinks, to pass this book by.

I am interested in how the bobo class thinks, but since I'm not part of that class, the observations noted here are merely interesting sociological tidbits, lacking in cohesion or relevance for me.

I understand that Mr. Brooks is well-entrenched in the upper echelon of this class, which provides him instant credibility and a uniquely relevant perspective on the bobo lifestyle.

I think anyone who spent $55 on a trowel in 2000 is stupid, no matter what kind of degree they earned (or from where), or where they decided to live, or what private school they decided to send their kids to.

I gave up on the book in Chapter 3. I realize there may be more interesting observations later in the text, but I have more important things to do with my time right now.

While brisk and often amusing in parts, this facile and self-congratulatory piece of pop sociology overlooks many fundamental aspects of our society, and provides muddled interpretations of most others, cheerfully endorsing the status quo. Its central thesis, that modern American life is governed by a fusion of bourgeouis and bohemian values, is simply spurious. I do not recommend this book for anyone seeking a better understanding of the underpinnings of class and the currents of culture in the US. Better to go back and read the classics Brooks references: Paul Goodman, Arendt, Daniel Bell, Jane Jacobs, William H. Whyte. Things haven't really changed so much as Brooks claims.

A few particular quibbles I have with the book:

1) What Meritocracy?

Brooks argues that the era of WASP privilege has been eclipsed by a brave new age of meritocracy ushered in by standardized testing and egalitarian college admissions practices. This is true in part, but grossly overstated by Brooks. The levers of power in our society are still held by white protestant men, despite a Kissinger here and a Condi there. Further, the best predictor of SAT scores continues to be parental income. The legacy system is alive and well. Perhaps the most gaping hole in Brooks' analysis is the absence of any mention of the middle and working classes, and their position with regard to the upper-middle

class he examines.

2)Bobos, or just yuppies?

When GW Bush, the born-again blueblood scion of generations of CT Yankees is said to be a Bobo, does the term really have any meaning? Despite repeated assertions, Brooks does not make a convincing case that his 'Bobo' represents a new and equal synthesis of the Bohemian and the Bourgeouis. The caricatures Brooks presents for inspection represent a superficial bohemianism, a bohemianism of the checkbook. They are simply the old bourgeouis, sans Christianity, and with a life thoroughly colonized by 'you-are-what-you-buy' consumer capitalism. True bohemianism, to me, means sacrificing the stultifying comforts of bourgeouis society (security, material possessions, safety from criticism, and yeah, good dental care) for the risks and rewards of a life in search of beauty and truth, whether that happens in front of a canvas, in the wilderness, on the barricades, or in the monastery.

3) Don't kill your idols, reread them!

Brooks' attempt to repudiate the great cultural critics and public intellectuals of the last century (like Lionel Trilling and Hannah Arendt) in favor of the TV and op-ed pundits of our time is craven and presumptive. The old guard made statements that were too sweeping, Brooks argues, too hostile to the mainstream. What's worse, he maintains, they weren't in touch with 'real life', as it's lived in the boardroom and cul-de-sac. Much better, he argues, are the great sound-bite critics of our day, who can offer up a few glib, unthreatening bon mots between commercials, sanctifying the bourgeouis mores they know so intimately. Great critics such as, well, David Brooks. I leave it to the reader to judge the relative merits of the critical output of the 1950s against that of our own era.

What a great and decent book about myself. Well Done Brookie. However, being cool Bobo is not nerdy, as percieved by a previous reviewer. Bobe's can be of pre-wealthy families, but these days (Yuppies? Lol-Where you been that last two decades, sonny) the majority are RICH due to hard strong study,torturous hours and 'blooming' hard work. The lesson is to enjoy this book, it's fun and fluency will pull you right in; understand we all have different lives: It IS true about the buying 'rubbish' for the hell of it - showing off etc - then never using it, and dropping to a low after....but just imagine what life would be like for YOU if you were sooo rich, that one just didnt enjoy shopping anymore....see, THEN how would you feel! BTW-'Nerdy' is an 'envy' term...........go on, save your money, give it a go, I promise you, you'll enjoy it (but in my case, et al, you'll enjoy studying and working for it much much more. Case Closed).

This review of today's culture seems like a regurgitation of thoughts from two of my least favorite television personalities - Andy Rooney and P.J. O'Rourke. I could only get through about 250 pages of the author's commentary on today's retail demographics. While the author has certainly done his fair share of research, it doesn't help this dry and un-funny view of today's society. I would much rather be subjected to Andy Rooney's 2 minute diatribes on 60 Minutes for a lifetime than to have to read this book again

"Bobos" serves up astute social criticism with wit and charm.
Brooks has a lot of important things to say about how life has changed in America in the last thirty years. (For instance, how the adoption of the SAT unleashed a powerful rise of a meritocracy class and an achievement obsessed culture.) But it is Brooks' masterful and hysterical prose that makes this book so worthwhile. His good-natured satire of new age materialism is particularly inspired. Chances are something in this book will hit close to home and make you laugh about your family, your friends, and yourself.

Brooks certainly isn't a social critic---at least not of Bobos. He LOVES Bobos. He thinks they're lovely, hard-working, practical and spiritual beings, who accidentally became wealthy, but he digs no deeper than the froth on a latte. Even so, I'm delighted to have read this self- congratulatory book about narcissistic people. I intend to read it again, and scribble fiercely in all the margins.

Brooks has a keen ability to articulate trends that seem obvious once you've read them. Despite his self-proclaimed status as a member of Bobo class, he pokes fun of them at every opportunity, while at the same time generally praising them. Brooks is most skeptical of the Bobos' shallowness, especially in the area of religion, but believes they are superior overall to the old establishment.
As a 22 year-old student at a liberal arts university, it was revealing to see how many of my own values fall perfectly in line with the Bobo class. "Bobos in Paradise" is insightful, funny, and easy to read. Near the end it gets a bit repetitive, but the sharp observations make it well worth checking out.

Brooks starts out with a thoughtful introduction, explaining how social power and the counterculture have converged and what the strange product of this mingling has been. He goes on to elaborate at excessive length, but with hilarious examples of upper-middle-class snobbery. Buy the book, read the introduction, and then skim the rest.

I predict that this will be THE book that cultural historians 50 years from now will be using when trying to explain the heady days of Clinton/Lewinsky, Microsoft/Starbucks, and REI/SUV. This book informed me and made me laugh. I did not want to finish this book! His observations are right on, as is his use of history to explain the present day. This book is a perfect blend of modern sociology and irony. Go get this book now - you won't be disappointed.

This book is an interesting (if sometimes needlessly verbose) book. Brooks' humor is good for light reading. The Weekly Standard contributor has an interesting, though hardly weighty, analysis of the modern yuppie, as well as some harsh criticisms and honest praise. I recommend this book for luxury reading.

I never really understood what the conflict was between the Bohemians and the Bourgeois until I read this book. Not only was it very educational from a sociological perspective but it was hilarious. I saw myself over and over again which makes me wonder just how unique I really am or if I am just being swept up in the cultural drift of our times. Great read!

The social class in power- establishment ivy league businessmen- merges with the reaction- sixties counterculture- creating the bourgeois bohemians- with the terribly silly abbreviation "bobos". This new power class mostly merges the defects of its antecedents- greed and pretentiousness- with possibly miniscule progress- social consciousness and education. So what is the new reaction? The "Jaywalking" hip-hop urban culture of Color?

Any time someone follows the crowd, he or she becomes bourgeois, and that is what the bohemians have done. These people like to think of themselves as the "meritocracy" or the "brains" of modern society, but they are neither. A true genius does not go to the trendy store down the street, or worry about having the right "Native American" craft hanging on the wall at home.
Mr. Brooks has written an entertaining, informative book about these silly people, and I had a hard time putting it down.
I had to laugh and laugh about these people who were probably unnoticeable or unpopular in high school. Give me the 6'4" blond football player who also happens to have a 150 I.Q. and who won the state math competition in his junior year; he's got a full scholarship to State to study pre-med...and he likes to take me to Burger King, where the Whoppers and fries are as good as they get!

An excellent book, a great idea, and pleasantly lighter in its cultural theory leanings than, say, Jean Baudrillard. I haven't ever laughed at myself as much as I did when I read the following: "Do you work for one of those hip, visionary software companies where everybody comes to work in hiking boots and glacier glasses, as if a 400-foot wall of ice were about to come sliding through the parking lot?" I have and do, in fact, and one of the members of our design team dons the aforesaid goggles daily. Really. I, too, am guilty in my own right however, fond of organic coffee and organic milk to go with it, as well as clunky running shoes in neutral colors (with which I don't do much running, particularly when playing with Photoshop). I just didn't know how amusing my behavior was until now. My lord, I've been successfully categorized.

Had light expectations when I first bought this book. It's one person's analysis on the history of Bohemian and bourgeois classes and how they have impacted/contrasted one another over time.

Easy read, and some great insights. Recommended.

I giggled at the hypocrites described inside. Yeah, the guys in Range Rovers moaning about the rain forest and crying about wage slaves in Jakarta while they look down on the poor slob who schleps out the Pellegrino at their table at Spago. Just another feature of our "you can have it all" society.
I recommend this one and a novel called "Only in America" by John Soltez, both of which offer keen looks at urb-suburb Greenwich Village poseurs... they both kept me snickering the night away. This is one to remember the next time you get an attitude from the guy in little square glasses waiting in line for a latte. Freak him out -- order a "doppio" and stare him at him like you just don't care...

No, give ME the 6'4" blond football player who also happens to have a 150 I.Q. and who won the state math competition in his junior year; he's got a full scholarship to State to study pre-med...and he likes to take me to Burger King, where the Whoppers and fries are as good as they get! To heck with the inevitable heart attack, where is the wunderkind? Oh, he validates you. A Bobo is just an anagram for "BOOB". Unfortunately, this book and the responses to it show that intellectual capacity combined with arrogance leads to astonishing stupidity.
Lest we forget the least among us, 1% of the U.S. populace holds 50% of the wealth and anyone else who assumes they are part of some meritocracy is deluded. I wish the author had been less neutral and more vitriolic with his humor.

This is one of the most useful books I have read in the past year.

I live immersed in a Burning Man, neo-hippies-with-money world, and so many things about my friends, my culture and my own life made no sense until I read this book. I found particularly compelling the story about the clash between the old WASP elites and the rising technocratic, bohemian elite in the 1960s. The "Sixties" is, I believe, much better understood as a clash between elites.

I believe the next great clash of elites will be between national elites and global elites. Watch for it.

I am Bobo. Hear me Roar.

Thank you, Mr. Brooks, for giving me a context for my culture.

Brooks has done a valuable service in charting a socioeconomic phenomenon. However the Bobos are not representative of the Upper Class AS A WHOLE.
There is a tremendous amount of conspicuous consumption in society as a whole. If the "rich peasants in Vegas" are a minority, then why is Las Vegas booming as much as ever. Also, the Bobo consumption pattern of "refined rusticity" is not much in evidence in Manhattan and Beverly Hills.
The Bobo is a geographic phenomenon found primarily in Ecotopia{the Pacific Northwest and Vermont} and not much in evidence elsewhere.

Paul Fussell seems to have predicted the rise of the Bobo in his book Class (see the final chapter, "The X Way Out"). Fussell's one chapter description of this type of creature is wittier and more on-target than Brooks' entire book.

This is a too superficial book on a vital and long-neglected topic - contemporary class analysis. Norman Podhoretz and others in the sixties taught us alot through their class analysis at the time, and their explanations on the rise of the New Class sixties-types.
The nineties was the decade of this new elite, as it was during the nineties that the new elite reached influential middle age:- writing for the New Yorker rather than a campus rag, arguing before judges as attorneys rather than before policemen as protestors, etc.
Unfortunately, after about 30 years of silence on this topic, Mr. Brooks declines to give it the serious thought it deserves. He also is far too easy on the Bobos. This is to be expected, unfortunately, from Mr. Brooks, as he has distinguished himself recently as a "conservative" pundit who is more than willing to argue on TV and in his magazine, The New Standard, that conservatives are rather wacky, and that the New York Times-reading elite are not so bad after all. As Mr. Brooks has taken up the Kevin Phillips / John McCain tactic of being "conservative, but not evil like all the rest of them" it is no accident, comrade, that this slim volume is more bouquet than brickbat. Mr. Brooks seems to feel, for example, that the Bobos combine the idealism of the "bohemian" and the practical virtues of the "bourgeois", when one might just as easily argue that the Bobos have jettisonned the bohemian's idealism (now that everything is supposed to be "ironic") and retained only his bitter dystopian affect (the "in-your-faceness" of the still-continuing Decade of Ugliness) while emulating the bourgeois' worst aspects (greasy-pole-climing ambition; keeping up with the Joneses) and sneering at old bourgeois values such as rationality and civility.

I didn't know what a Bobo was, but the cover caught my eye while browing an airport bookstore. The idea of sitting outside, looking at my laptop whie sipping coffee was very appealing (as depicted on the cover)....If a book could tell me how to get that life, I was sure I needed it. A 'tool' to get me there......little did I know what I was in store for...I was a Bobo and didn't even know it. I've since passed the book along (to Bobo's and non-Bobo's....) and they all seem to agree who is and is not a Bobo.....
I was on my way to Home Depot today in our SUV, drinking designer coffee, wearing expedition weight coats, sport sunglasses (that won't come off even when you're upside down) and rubber-studded hiking shoes (they're not boots--they're like tennis shoes on crack).......it hits you at different times just how Bobo you REALLY are...

Browsing through the reviews, it seems that the serious students of sociology are not amused by this romp: Hey, lighten up! Its a quick, breezy, and rib-tickling portrait of this class. "Bobo's" will replace the "yuppies". If the notion of "bobo's" really catches on, I can't wait to see what the advertises do. Renovation Hardware Beware!

BoBos in Hell

Far from paradise, David Brooks' selectively observed view of professional class Americans is humorous and almost radical. What Howard Zinn labeled the "Centurions", the class of professional ruling class defenders, bred by the elite class to carry out the complex processes that underlie modern market economies, Brooks infantilizes with the name "bobo" - a term that incorrectly if compactly conveys a balance between conflicting imperatives of bourgeois and bohemian beliefs. Rather than portray balance, Brooks correctly identifies the ways in which the bohemian critique of bourgeois values has been killed and skinned and used as disguise over consumption patterns that reinforce the class location of the bobo, both its powers and dependencies.

But far from being a paradise, Brooks describes what could easily be recast as BoBos in Hell. While the bobo class is made up of a large number of people from several previously "restricted" ethnic, national, and racial groups, Brooks would take this as proof of an irreversible revolution in social mores and political rights. No longer will simple racism keep smart Latinos, Asians, African Americans and Jews out of positions of managerial and creative authority. This emancipation is linked in turns to the dissolution of the existing exhausted elites (and possibly their wise and gentle passing of the torch of leadership to a new, vibrant, less WASPy population of technocratic professionals), to the rise of information rich professions for which the ruling class had no depth of skill and were forced to outsource to previously excluded populations.

Brooks makes clear that the expansion of the professional class to include people from these previously excluded populations is not in fact an indication that class relationships have changed. In fact, the Bobo is observed closely in one of their class-defining practices: consumption. This consumption is costly in terms of money and knowledge: bobo consumption is a process that demands finding rare or highly designed objects which in turn require time and literacy to discover, purchase, install, operate, and remove when no longer either the current best or simply no longer valued by their class's sense of fashion. Brooks notes the efforts bobo must exert to earn enough to consume these goods while supporting the "spare" time demanded for studying changing consumption markets and trends. Their exposure to relative depravation is amusingly labeled "Status Income Disequilibrium" caused by exposure to people more wealthy than themselves. But such exposures have real effects that are less amusing. Class differences, like many social barriers, are challenging terrains to cross and often more difficult for those who must move upwards than for those stooping from the other direction.

While bobos do not worry for food and shelter, they do worry for their ability to continue to consume the right foods and live in the right kinds of shelters. This is not, as Brooks would have it, a proof of bobo superficiality. These are the codes and rituals of membership of a demanding class segment, one of the last proletarian classes that has not been utterly ravaged by wage erosion and expense inflation. Nonetheless, Bobo are squeezed hard by the costs of housing, elder care, childcare, luxury vehicles, private tuitions, and appropriate vacation, recreation and dining experiences. While far more pleasant a round of expenses, Bobos are not shown to be any more financially independent than workers in lower classes, or even on trajectories that would make them so. Debt seems to be a common and often just barely manageable attribute of bobo life. Despite their educations, Bobos are forced to consume in ways that resemble the owner class (or their representatives) who possess assets that are one or two orders of magnitude larger than the Bobo.

Brooks avoids any discussion of trends in real household net worth of the Bobos -- which may be far more negative than their class status may suggest. In fact, he alludes to the benefits of a bobo class that is "engaged" (a condition cultivated by debt) rather than aloof (and presumably populated by the wealthy, receivers of their patronage, or those willing to take vows of poverty). An intelligentsia that is not corrupted by dependence and deeply entwined in the debt economy is a bad thing, Brooks suggests. Such an intelligentsia cultivates pompous denunciations of commercialism and self-important declarations.

While sweeping manifestos may be pompus, Brooks does not explain why there should be no population that is able to hold itself apart from market demands in order to cultivate an independent perspective. Nor is it clearly demonstrated that all independent intellectuals generate the poor quality results he highlights. Conflicts of interest are often considered important to avoid for situations demanding impartial opinions. Not so for Brooks for our general academic and professional class - keeping them on a treadmill of inane consumption is preferred.

American bobos bear a significant portion of the costs of their class reproduction, bobo children are costly, a cost increasingly born by bobo parents in terms of education costs that most other industrialized nations subsidize. Combined with their parents and their own elder care costs, bobo's face an endless series of high expenses that keep them entirely focused on careers with high income returns. The bobo is mocked for their desire to "consume" social justice in the form of product consumption habits. Such practices are amusing but are ultimately an illustration that bobo lack the time and autonomy to "do something" beyond consuming products that claim to do something for the environment for them.

The endless need for the bobo to engage in a bourgeois form of bohemian activity - making every open ended, expressive, organic experience into a measured, performance focused, growth experience illustrates the extremes to which the bobo life is formatted by the bourgeois imperative, not the integration and balance of the two sides. Bohemianism has not triumphed, it has been devoured. Only its skin remains as camouflage for bourgeois practices, a begrudged spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down, an allowance in exchange for easier self-compliance instead of costly coercion. Bohemian game preserves, like the open space corporation plans that are intended to cultivate the creation of creative products may be a model for the future more humane workplace. Or, they may be the most efficient extractors of intellectual products, a kind of organic, free-range poultry product, that are severely limited in terms of the scope of the workforce (factory farmed) who could ever hope to be able to work in such places.

Brooks should have considered some other aspects of quintessential bobo consumption habits like anti-depressants, blood pressure and cholesterol medications, erectile dysfunction, and less legal forms of substance abuse. Far from the bohemianism of the bobo breaking through, the rise in pharmacological consumption is as much a function of declining real incomes and increasing household expenses. Bobos are working harder, working longer and suffer the erosion of their mental and physical health. Brooks casually mentions the stress created by the contrast between the very wealthy and their own personal debt and constrained financial prospects.

A more balanced vision of the bobo would not exclude these very real pressures on this demographic. A more radical perspective would ask while the elite needs to bleed its centurion class.

BoBos in Hell

Far from paradise, David Brooks' selectively observed view of professional class Americans is humorous and almost radical. What Howard Zinn labeled the "Centurions", the class of professional ruling class defenders, bred by the elite class to carry out the complex processes that underlie modern market economies, Brooks infantilizes with the name "bobo" - a term that incorrectly if compactly conveys a balance between conflicting imperatives of bourgeois and bohemian beliefs. Rather than portray balance, Brooks correctly identifies the ways in which the bohemian critique of bourgeois values has been killed and skinned and used as disguise over consumption patterns that reinforce the class location of the bobo, both its powers and dependencies.

But far from being a paradise, Brooks describes what could easily be recast as BoBos in Hell. While the bobo class is made up of a large number of people from several previously "restricted" ethnic, national, and racial groups, Brooks would take this as proof of an irreversible revolution in social mores and political rights. No longer will simple racism keep smart Latinos, Asians, African Americans and Jews out of positions of managerial and creative authority. This emancipation is linked in turns to the dissolution of the existing exhausted elites (and possibly their wise and gentle passing of the torch of leadership to a new, vibrant, less WASPy population of technocratic professionals), to the rise of information rich professions for which the ruling class had no depth of skill and were forced to outsource to previously excluded populations.

Brooks makes clear that the expansion of the professional class to include people from these previously excluded populations is not in fact an indication that class relationships have changed. In fact, the Bobo is observed closely in one of their class-defining practices: consumption. This consumption is costly in terms of money and knowledge: bobo consumption is a process that demands finding rare or highly designed objects which in turn require time and literacy to discover, purchase, install, operate, and remove when no longer either the current best or simply no longer valued by their class's sense of fashion. Brooks notes the efforts bobo must exert to earn enough to consume these goods while supporting the "spare" time demanded for studying changing consumption markets and trends. Their exposure to relative depravation is amusingly labeled "Status Income Disequilibrium" caused by exposure to people more wealthy than themselves. But such exposures have real effects that are less amusing. Class differences, like many social barriers, are challenging terrains to cross and often more difficult for those who must move upwards than for those stooping from the other direction.

While bobos do not worry for food and shelter, they do worry for their ability to continue to consume the right foods and live in the right kinds of shelters. This is not, as Brooks would have it, a proof of bobo superficiality. These are the codes and rituals of membership of a demanding class segment, one of the last proletarian classes that has not been utterly ravaged by wage erosion and expense inflation. Nonetheless, Bobo are squeezed hard by the costs of housing, elder care, childcare, luxury vehicles, private tuitions, and appropriate vacation, recreation and dining experiences. While far more pleasant a round of expenses, Bobos are not shown to be any more financially independent than workers in lower classes, or even on trajectories that would make them so. Debt seems to be a common and often just barely manageable attribute of bobo life. Despite their educations, Bobos are forced to consume in ways that resemble the owner class (or their representatives) who possess assets that are one or two orders of magnitude larger than the Bobo.

Brooks avoids any discussion of trends in real household net worth of the Bobos -- which may be far more negative than their class status may suggest. In fact, he alludes to the benefits of a bobo class that is "engaged" (a condition cultivated by debt) rather than aloof (and presumably populated by the wealthy, receivers of their patronage, or those willing to take vows of poverty). An intelligentsia that is not corrupted by dependence and deeply entwined in the debt economy is a bad thing, Brooks suggests. Such an intelligentsia cultivates pompous denunciations of commercialism and self-important declarations.

While sweeping manifestos may be pompus, Brooks does not explain why there should be no population that is able to hold itself apart from market demands in order to cultivate an independent perspective. Nor is it clearly demonstrated that all independent intellectuals generate the poor quality results he highlights. Conflicts of interest are often considered important to avoid for situations demanding impartial opinions. Not so for Brooks for our general academic and professional class - keeping them on a treadmill of inane consumption is preferred.

American bobos bear a significant portion of the costs of their class reproduction, bobo children are costly, a cost increasingly born by bobo parents in terms of education costs that most other industrialized nations subsidize. Combined with their parents and their own elder care costs, bobo's face an endless series of high expenses that keep them entirely focused on careers with high income returns. The bobo is mocked for their desire to "consume" social justice in the form of product consumption habits. Such practices are amusing but are ultimately an illustration that bobo lack the time and autonomy to "do something" beyond consuming products that claim to do something for the environment for them.

The endless need for the bobo to engage in a bourgeois form of bohemian activity - making every open ended, expressive, organic experience into a measured, performance focused, growth experience illustrates the extremes to which the bobo life is formatted by the bourgeois imperative, not the integration and balance of the two sides. Bohemianism has not triumphed, it has been devoured. Only its skin remains as camouflage for bourgeois practices, a begrudged spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down, an allowance in exchange for easier self-compliance instead of costly coercion. Bohemian game preserves, like the open space corporation plans that are intended to cultivate the creation of creative products may be a model for the future more humane workplace. Or, they may be the most efficient extractors of intellectual products, a kind of organic, free-range poultry product, that are severely limited in terms of the scope of the workforce (factory farmed) who could ever hope to be able to work in such places.

Brooks should have considered some other aspects of quintessential bobo consumption habits like anti-depressants, blood pressure and cholesterol medications, erectile dysfunction, and less legal forms of substance abuse. Far from the bohemianism of the bobo breaking through, the rise in pharmacological consumption is as much a function of declining real incomes and increasing household expenses. Bobos are working harder, working longer and suffer the erosion of their mental and physical health. Brooks casually mentions the stress created by the contrast between the very wealthy and their own personal debt and constrained financial prospects.

A more balanced vision of the bobo would not exclude these very real pressures on this demographic. A more radical perspective would ask while the elite needs to bleed its centurion class.

Parts of this book made me so mad that I shamelessly flung it at my walls. It seems to me that the author thinks that Bobos are adorable with their ability to spend small fortunes on absolutely nothing while pretending they have an ethos because they aren't like the marriage page of the NY Times in the 50s. If you are a baby boomer, please don't read this book, realize that you are in tune with the world, and then quietly lull yourself with an organic parka or whatever nonsense it is ok to spend thousands of dollars on in the Bobo world. Read Daniel Quinn. Read Paul Hawken.

One hates to be a snob, but the author seems to know very little about the true upper class. The people about whom he writes are largely middle class--upper middle class, perhaps, but "middle" nonetheless. For better or worse, I would argue that the "bobos" are not, in fact, running the country, either. He gives them far too much credit in terms of their supposed "power." And George W. a bobo? Hardly. He's as elite and old money as they come; it's just that he has a Texas twang! I also would argue that the group about which he writes is nothing new. The nouveau riche will always be with us, and they will always be a group of show-off super-consumers who are slightly ill at ease as they try to reconcile newfound wealth vs. humbler, occasionally bohemian roots.

Bobos only tells us where we came from, where we are and where we're going. Other than that it's useless! To those folks who evaluate ideas on their research pedigree and not their merit, I can only agree with Emerson: "Consistency is the hobgoblin of a little mind."

It was George Will's column that led us to order this new book by a Weekly Standard staffer. This book is a quick and easy read with lots of chuckles and a few guffaws. Brooks traces the development of a new "meritocracy" at the top of the American pay heap, that has combined the best values of the bourgeousie and the bohemian cultures of times gone by. Thus, the Bobo has graduated from an ivy league college in the post 1960s era, and enjoys such pleasures as drinking latte and owning a restaurant-type kitchen range. Brooks' sense of humor is gentle, as he himself is a Bobo. If you found The Bell Curve to be full of interesting theory despite its "political incorrectness," you will enjoy this book as well. If you're a "boomer," you'll find lots to enjoy here!

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.

How could 60's culture meet 80's culture without disaster? David Brooks is hilarious in his analysis of a generation that has fused the conflicting cultures. Consumerism with a conscience.
The book is lacking in statistics so it serves as entertainment more than a study. I felt that he was dead-on in describing my peers.

I bought the book because the reviews at the time were better. I've decided that I don't care about finishing the book at this point; I've been bored with the so-called 'humorous' analogies that I have heard many times before. The author isn't making any new, incredible observations, he's merely telling us what a short newspaper article has already told us.
To sum it up, the book is great if you've never watched prime time television, have never seen a Starbucks, or don't understand what dot-coms are. Otherwise, pass it by.

The perfect book to read in a long flight. Come to think about it, if you happen to be flying abroad and this is not your first time, you'll probably find a lot of yourself described in this book. And that is regardless of your nationality! Easy to read and amusing though a bit exaggerated as the people they describe in the book are not upper-class but upper-middle class. Yet, I would definitely recommend it.
PS: Read "Class" by Paul Fussel if you really want to understand the American Class System.

This is a fluffy look at the behavior of an influential segment of wealthy people today. Very funny in parts, tedious in others. But social comment is best done at a distance, and Brooks seems too worried about what his Bobo friends and neighbors might think to finish what he started. The book trails off, as he descends into explaining why the Bobos are different (and better) than the generations of wealthy people that have preceeded them.
I'd take Paul Fussell's "Class" any day over this.

Elitists love to throw around the term "witty" to describe some of the biggest lunatic frauds around, like John Stewart, Keith Olbermann and Bill Maher. But David Brooks, the last sane editorialist the NY Crimes employs, IS witty. He's at his best here, exposing the hypocrisy of the the left: hippies who want to be yuppie elities and vice versa. And he does it with such objectivity and great vocabulary and examples. I've lived in many of these locales as well as the Heartland. Brooks is dead on. His thorough research is also evident. Good stuff.

I bought the book at an airport book store and read it to try to understand my adult children. I thought parts of it were very humorous and insightful. Some parts dragged on and on. Overall I thought it a fun book.

I was very lucky to get the last of the limited edition (100 copies) of this book printed on fine acid free paper made from Mendocino County Hemp and signed by the author using ink gently extracted from farm raised Indian Ocean great octopus. It's quite a find, the book is. The hand stitched binding was done at a Zen Monastery by Monks who like to focus on simple things like that. The book itself has the author's signature on the front cover is a dazzling gold gilt work. Mind you the gilt is NOT gold, of course not, but the coloring from the wings of a rare butterfly found only on South Georgia Island. Other than that, the typeface is kind of boring (Time Roman I think) and there are no pictures. Gotta go, time for my reflexology session.

I first read David Brooks' Bobos in Paradise in my junior year of high school. I was different then-- a lot more smug, certainly not as far left (politically) as I've become in my current form. When I then read it, it was more out of interest for the culture that I, as a middle- (perhaps upper-middle) class kid who did well in academics, was poised to inherit. Needless to say, I read it then out of self-interest, and attempt to critique it today from a larger perspective.
Brooks makes some mistakes in his book. He declares the Bobos to be an "upper class." This is true in that, by Bobo (Brooks') standards, they lead the fullest and most enviable lifestyles. But that doesn't make them an upper class, because unfortunately the George W. Bush elite still holds far more power than the Bobo one. Bobos don't own the media, they don't control the big corporations, and they can't afford the huge campaign donations that corrupt the elections.
Brooks also makes the mistake inherent in grouping people; "Bobos" include too wide a range to be classified in any one way. What defines a Bobo, one should first ask. I'm probably a member of the intellectual top 10% (not to brag or anything... :) ) but, as an 18-year-old, I make $6.50/hr in the summer at a grocery store. Additionally, I'm decidedly liberal, I deplore elitism (hypocritically, of course) and proudly drink tapwater (bottled water's only upscale for one reason: It was originally a symbol of upper-class life as an extended vacation; in other countries, where, unlike as is the case in America, the tapwater is of low quality, it is a necessity... thus it becomes an emblem of travel... but that's another topic). So, am I a Bobo? Should I be? I'm not sure he answers those questions...
My greatest problem, though, with Brooks' book is not the material, which is fairly accurate and respectable coverage. However, he calls the Bobos "bourgeois bohemians," but they are bohemians of no sort. Bohemianism is about renunciation of material life for the artistic/spiritual life, and no one who works at Microsoft, for ex., or who even owns a cell-phone, while they may be respectable individuals (I'm not deriding them; I'm no bohemian), can self-apply this label. Bobos might intersect, juggle, or separate without compromising their corporate and their spiritual lives, but they do not renounce one for the other. They are fully bourgeois, merely a somewhat admirable bourgeois that admits its S&M (APEX...) proclivities or is more willing to consider alternative religions and liberal politics.
Bobos in paradise is not a bad book, in fact it is a good one, but it must be read critically. The Bobo lifestyle is elitist and Brooks' "Bobo" class describes a wide range of not always related behavior, some of which is admirable, some of which is utterly self-indulgent and despicable. As well, his book seems to perpetuate the myth that we live in a Society of the Mind, that we've finally reached the point where the upper classes are filled by the smart and the working classes by the dumb. We haven't. 1.) There are many idiots/inepts/lazy people in the professional and managerial classes. 2.) There are many very intelligent, creative, hard-working (many working 2 full-time jobs), and interesting people in the so-called "working classes," probably at a fraction of (from my grocery store experience) 40 to 80 percent, the 80 applying to "working class" occupations requiring harder work. 3.) There's no convincing moral reason why a high-intelligence person ought to live a better life than a supposed "low-intelligence" person, anyway. Everyone, regardless of whether or not his/her IQ is 75 or 150, ought to have decent living conditions and be treated fairly by society... The scope of Brooks' thesis allows him to sidestep those three concerns. But you shouldn't (sorry for didactism). Other than that, it's a good book, and I recommend it.
~Mike

If you have ever shopped in Restoration Hardware,long for the "simple life",like texture in your fabrics,this is for you.This book is a hilarious,snide,and deadly accurate look at a social phenomenon.I had been to virtually every location in the book,and ended up laughing at myself as well as the book.This is a fast read,and superbly observed

The book was an unread hardcover at a very good price (less than a new paperback.) Brooks draws together many seeming unrelated phenomena into a coherent picture of the new upper middle class. You will gain a better understanding of our society from reading this book.

Thoughtful and deep but make a few too many generalizations. I don't know too many of these upper class twits as it turns out. Still, there are some observations about Bobo consumptive patterns that utterly ring true, in my experience.

David Brooks really captured the BoBo life. His examples were funny and to the point. "How many organic products are in the market today?" This book is a great modern social commentary especially if you are a part of it.

I had to read this book for a freshman level economics class, and wasn't looking forward to it. However, it was good. It tends to drag on toward the middle, but overall is entertaining and you will find yourself recognizing people you know or even yourself.

If David Brooks, now resident Bush Apologist for the New York Times, is right that the Meritocracy defeated the Aristocracy, why is the ultimate "legacy" George W. Bush now President?
The Neocons would like for you to believe that it's all now merit based, but the ultra rich keep getting richer, the inheritance tax is now gone, and House and Senate seats are passed down across generations. Yuppies may have more stuff these days, but real power these days is increasingly in the hands of the few.
Interesting thesis, wrong conclusion.

There is no particular evidence that the author knows nothing about his subject. Anyone could have written this just by making up the appropriate cliche. Great care is taken to maintain the reader's emotional distance and make sure that they can feel superior to the subject matter, rather than giving them any sense of involvement or personality. This is just feeling-superior-pornography. It's possible that this book is a true description of people I don't know, but even so it would be horrible writing.

I was sent a copy of this book by a friend who thought the section on BDSM an enlightening glimpse of why BDSM is popular among his friends. I had to tell him he was wrong. I don't know anyone in our mutual friend group who practices BDSM like that or relates to BDSM that way emotionally.

The portrayal of the Bobo in this book, and, more importantly, the fascination and inner glee with which many will gobble up this portrayal, seem light-hearted and fun, but herein lies the reason that Dubya managed to win over the hearts and minds of good, average, working-class people everywhere. Shockingly similar to Brooks' depictions is the conversatives' and right-wing fundamentalists' portrayal of liberals and Democrats: as effete, latte-loving milquetoasts, who know little to nothing about the travails and tribulations of hard-working, ordinary folk. The resulting "cultural wars," based on issues like gay marriage, abortion, and separation of church and state, served as the perfect mask to the dark agenda that Bush and the right-wingers have planned: privatization of social security, revamping of the tax and bankruptcy codes to benefit large corporations and the ultra-wealthy, the destruction of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the list goes on and on.

Although I will admit to having enjoyed many of the anectodes in this book, it must be pointed out that they appeal only on the basest, most superficial level, and for this I am ashamed. Diverted by all the gadgets, toys, and conveniences of modern-day living, and the incessant feed of so-called ideas from a putatively liberal media, the Bobos and the primates who poke fun at them remain blissfully oblivious to the utter economic and environmental disaster that we're headed toward.

Instead of spending your money on this book, I recommend that you sit down, find some well-written blogs, and read some (free!) critical commentary on politics and the state of our country, and then try to formulate your own ideas about our society today; in other words, THINK for yourself.

If the merit of a book were to be exclusively rated by virtue of readability and entertainment value, then this book is going to be a well-deserved and predictable best-seller. However, if one reads books s to become a more aware, better informed, and intellectually astute citizen, then this is a trite, superficial, and absolutely worthless tome. Like cotton candy, a sweet experience, but almost absolutely devoid of any substantive nutritional content.
Brooks admits in the opening chapter that he considers his work an exercise in what he refers to as "comic sociology". Well, at least he got the comic part right. Please don't misunderstand me; he is obviously a talented, perceptive, and entertaining writer, and one finds the text quite readable and easy to follow and absorb. The problem here is that his analysis is too far superficial to be worthwhile. He admits, for example, that he is no Max Weber (a famous turn of the century sociologist and social theorist who was an astute and amazingly prescient critic of modern capitalist culture). Perhaps if he had read Professor Weber more closely (or at all?) he might have recognized the dangers of placing too much stress on one aspect of a complex social envionment and then overemphasizing its importance in the overall scheme of that particular cultural milieiu.
This is the theoretical mistake Herr Weber accuses Karl Marx of making with dialetical materialism; mistaking the observable fact of the progressive alienation of workers in 19th century manufacturing factories of being alienated for being the central motive force in history. What Marx didn't recognize, unfortunately, was that all participants in large modern industrial societies are by course of the organization of that society into social institutions ritually expropriated from the means of participation in it. Thus, individuals can express their talents and capabilites only though participation and cooperation with large-scale social institutions (read bureaucracies here).
Moreover, this is exactly what Mr. Brooks does, mistaking some colorful and paradoxical symptoms of the critical breakdown in the integrity and cohesiveness of modern society and its accompanying cultural ethos for a new culture ethos itself. Indeed, his choice of books for reference here is telling, all dated in the unusual and historically atypical period of the the Affluent society of the 1950s. He studiously ignores a plethora of more traditional and more recent and relevant monographs, such as "Technopoly", by Neil Postman, "The Power Elite" by C.Wright Mills, and "The Cult of Information" by Theodore Roszak.
In essence, Brooks seems amazingly ignorant of the fact that with the rise of a number of related cultural phenomena in the last forty to fifty years, the majority of urban and suburban Americans (especially those who are habitually electronically connected to the media) are deeply confused and disoriented in terms of their cultural orientation. In fact, most Americans feel no cultural constraint to be consistent in terms of what they believe in each of the various aspects of their lives, seeing them as completely disconnected and absolutely independent phenomena.
This is, in fact, the end-point of the alienation process predicted by Marx, Weber, and Durkheim long agao, and is often referred to in more recent terms as "individuation", or absolute cultural fragmentation, disintegration and dissipation into irrelevancy. In this manner we can say that these citizens don't have an integrated cultural ethos so much as they have a grab-bag of ideas, opinions, and views that they feel no need to better understand and integrate into anything approaching a coherent and intelligent world -view.
The main culprits in this evolution has been 1) the rise and domination of dissemination of public information by the electronic media, 2) the segregation of Americans by virtue of income and lifestyles, and 3) the progressive vitiation of all integration and meaning in our cultural values with the astounding confusion and disintegration of all our social institutions as a result of the ongoing changes associated with the technological revolution.
Seen in this way, reading this slim and silly volume is like spending an afternoon watching old Sylvester Stallone movies; entertaining but unconsequential in terms of what one learns from the time so spent. The real danger with watching such movies, of course, is that one may begin to believe that Sly's problem-solving approach as depicted in Rambo is an accurate model for how to conduct one's own life. Here the danger is that too many gullible bozos will read all about bobos and believe it is an accurate depiction of the cutting edge of America's upper class.
Shake off the demons, friend, and pass this one by. This book is, in my opinion, silly and specious nonsense written by someone so insulated in his experience and so lacking in socio-historical perspective that he has little or no idea of what he is talking about. No doubt, however that this book will become a smash best-seller and be the talk of the nation for the next several months. I expect to see Mr. Brooks on Oprah any day now. But then again, as our old amigo Arlo Guthrie would say, "That's America". Go figure!

Used to respect Mr. Brooks and like his analyses, but not anymore after his stance in the most recent, brutal Israel war against imprisoned people of Gaza. This guy should be ashamed of himself. His son SERVED in the Israeli IDF (army) during latest Gaza war. Mr. Brooks, meanwhile, was the “neutral commentator” constantly appearing on NPR, NYT, and PBS, passionately defending Israel (his country of first loyalty) and justifying its massacre in Gaza. He never acknowledged that his son is ALSO fighting Palestinians in Gaza. He only acknowledged this fact very recently to an Israeli media outlet after he was busted by Alison Weir, the founder of “If Americans Know”. Shame on NYT and NPR for not kicking this morally bankrupt jurno out.

http://alisonweir.org/journal/2014/10/8/my-email-to-new-york-times-public-editor-about-david-brooks.html

http://alisonweir.org/journal/2014/10/10/npr-covers-for-david-brooks.html