Rating: 
Summary: Victors in the Culture War (?)
Review: David Brooks does not know whether he wants to imitate Lucius Beebe's "The Big Spenders" or Vilfredo Pareto's "The Rise and Fall of Elites." "Bobos in Paradise," billed as "comic sociology," is neither as funny as Beebe, nor as sociologically acute as Pareto. Still, it contains a few striking aperçus.Brooks tells us that the cultural warfare of the 'sixties has ended. The stodgy old bourgeoisie, with its clubs, cotillions, and suburban respectability, has been replaced by a new élite deriving its status from brains (or at least formal educational credentials) rather than bloodlines and inherited money. This new élite exhibits superficially "bohemian" manners and mores (if not morals), but not bohemian disdain for money and commerce. These people he describes as "bourgeois bohemians," or BoBos, for short. Their tastes run to slate-tiled shower stalls and trendy coffee shops rather than to gold plumbing fixtures and white-tablecloth lobster palaces à la Delmonico. Brooks's descriptions of "latte towns," filled with shops offering "jars of powdered fo-ti root, Mayan Fungus Soup... hand-painted TV armoires, fat smelly candles, a Provençal spaghetti strainer..." are not quite as entertaining as Beebe chronicling the gilded-age opulence of August Belmont and Evander Berry Wall or the inspired fatuities of Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, but are amusing and well-targeted. Where Brooks falls short is in claiming to discern a Pareto-style succession of élites. The old bourgeoisie has indeed been supplanted - long ago. James Burnham told how it happened in "The Managerial Revolution," published in 1941. The old bourgeoisie was local. It existed in every small town; at its bottom end were mom-and-pop shopkeepers, at its top the mill owner, the banker, maybe the newspaper publisher, and somewhere in between lay the "professional men" (physicians, lawyers, clergymen) who had some sort of academic education. This same structure existed in big cities on a grander scale. The advent of the publicly-traded corporation brought about the end of the family firm at this level. It created "market capitalization," whereby a firm was valued at the trading value of its shares, rather than at the net worth indicated on its balance sheet. This made many owners very rich. It also gave them liquidity, freeing them to diversify holdings and obtain income from sources other than the earnings of family businesses. Increasingly, the management of those businesses became the province of hired managers with the necessary skills, rather than that of owners who no longer needed to know how to manage their businesses. Divorce of ownership from control created a new élite, those who managed and controlled. This transition was at first masked by graceful absorption of the new élite into the old bourgeois society. As the natural wasting of inheritances by division amongst heirs was accelerated through estate taxation (introduced around the time of World War I), many old families that neglected to cultivate managerial skills declined and disappeared, while new men rose to prominence. The disappearance by the 1960s of the duPont name from the management of E.I. duPont de Nemours & Co., and the appointment of a man named Shapiro to its chief executive post, may not been as widely noted as the noisy street theater of the period, but it was a far more significant indication of the social and economic change that had been taking place steadily for several decades. The BoBos Brooks describes are only the most recent beneficiaries of this change. Departures from previous fashions in conspicuous consumption are mainly superficial. Altered attitudes towards religion and towards public service are not - there has been real and alarming change here. Brooks is more optimistic than he should be. Cropping up throughout the book, as well as in a chapter devoted to the subject, is the spiritual void left by abandonment of the old certitudes. Unsatisfied religious instincts often manifest themselves in devotion to quasi-religious causes such as environmentalism, third-world debt relief, animal rights, etc. There is a desire for the comforting forms and rituals of traditional religion, but not its constricting, old-fashioned views on personal conduct, particularly those involving sex. Brooks briefly notes the public-service ethic of the old American patriciate. Young men of the class of George H.W. Bush volunteered without a second thought for World War II. The debâcle of Vietnam put an end to this. Middle- and upper middle-class youth of the 1960s may have protested that war loudly, but did so even then from the safety of their college deferments. Since that time the uniformed services have been snubbed by the class that provides the country's civilian leadership. If the country were again to face a crisis having the proportions of World War II, how long would the public accept the leadership of a civilian élite unwilling to go into harm's way along with hoi polloi? Previous élites have understood that sacrifice was necessary to the maintainance of élite status. For more than forty years this has been untrue of the managerial élite, and never less so than with the ascendancy of the BoBos. Bill and Hillary Clinton (quintessential BoBos) made no secret of their disdain for the military, which the military repaid in kind. If, as seems to be the case, America must take on the imperial tasks of a world hegemon, this is an important concern. Maybe the remedy is to reinstate the purchase of military commissions. The carriage trade has known for years how to create value by hanging a high price tag on its merchandise. BoBos who go in for "adventure vacations" in malarial rainforests might be ideal customers.
Rating: 
Summary: Insightful but incomplete
Review: 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?
Rating:
Summary: A fun read
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: You don't have to read it all to get the point...
Review: 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..
Rating:
Summary: Breezy entertainment with a hollow heart
Review: Nobody wants to be called a yuppie these days. As a social phenomenon, the yuppies, with their power suits and moussed hair, are now looked back upon with about as much affection as the Hitler youth. They were pushy and arrogant, yet they seemed to be everywhere. So where did they all go? David Brooks ventures an amusing answer in Bobos in Paradise, in which he defines and describes a new social class, the 'bourgeois bohemians', or bobos. A bobo combines the solid fiscal sensibility of the village burgher with the daring lifestyle choices of the left bank. Brooks thinks bobos reconcile the great social cleavage of the 1960s between the squares and the counterculture. Bobos in Paradise is a very funny, entertaining book, and it's highly readable. Brooks is a very clever salesman -- much more so than his brutally honest predecessor in 'comic sociology', Paul Fussell, whose 1983 book *Class* is a much more pointed analysis of the American social system. Fussell heartlessly dissects and illustrates his three major classes, i.e. upper, middle and lower, all of which he sees as roiling moshpits of status consciousness and envy. Brooks is much less brave: as a self-professed bobo, he only tweaks his upper-middle-class, book-buying, bobo audience, satirizing bobo sensibilities yet carefully avoiding any violations of serious bobo taboos. He's good at seeming to be a bad boy. But bobos aren't upper-middle class, you protest! Doesn't Brooks himself identify them as the nation's new 'upper class'? .... Fussell, wherever he is these days, would chide Brooks for missing the ways in which bobos are in fact achingly middle class. Fussell nails down the primary distinction between uppers and middles: uppers don't care what other people think of them; middles, on the other hand, inhabit a very universe of social insecurity, made manifest in slavish devotion to correct tastes and trends. In fact, I'd argue very little has changed in the overall American class structure since Fussell wrote Class, except that the upper-middle class have simply decided they'll ape bohemian egomaniacs instead of upper-class twits. This is not insignificant, in that the upper middles dictate much of the nation's popular culture, but it doesn't mean the bobos have supplanted the real upper class, either. Brooks is also very, very kind to bobos in assuming they're so generally beneficent, and that they're likely to be such a stable, self-perpetuating phenomenon. When times are good, it's easy for people to spend their money trying to appear socially correct and even trendy. But these bobo characteristics don't seem very deeply rooted. Brooks's chapter on bobos' spiritual lives exposes their deracination. Brooks makes a facile identification of a 'civil society' that exhibits 'social cohesion' with true spirituality. But bobos can't re-root themselves in the spiritual depths of a genuine faith by acquiring a few of its liturgical accoutrements. Buying a 1950s-style toaster doesn't transform your life into Ward and June Cleaver's -- it's just a toaster, in the end. In the same way, the bobos who collect congenial bits of ritual from a variety of religious traditions don't get any closer to God, even if it does make them feel vaguely better. It's only self-denial that opens up the depths of true spiritual commitment. From Brooks' description, this crucial little nugget is completely indigestible to bobos, whose personal autonomy must override any demands from another power, no matter how high. The only rein upon this autonomy, predictably, is peer pressure -- in bobos' case, their abhorrence of appearing intolerant or 'fanatical'. To be fair, Brooks realizes all this, and tries to show how bobos might sidestep this dilemma. He calls the bobo spiritual compromise 'choice reconciled with commitment', and suggests that 'maybe it can work'. Later, though, he admits that 'the thing we [bobos] are in danger of losing is our sense of belonging'. But belonging to what? At this point Brooks retreats, like a good bobo must, from pressing the issue deeper. It would be too dangerously fanatical to ask gauche questions about whether or not God, well, exists -- and if so, if he can make any demands on us. As Brooks admits, '[bobos] prefer a moral style that doesn't shake things up' (p. 250). But this is again a hopelessly middle-class validation of the status quo. When conventionality and nicely-judged social respectability trump belief, then choice wins, commitment loses. Committed believers are therefore anathema to the bobo ethic. Bobos are afraid of any power that might upset their little worlds, since deep down they know those worlds float untethered on a shallow sea of trivial lifestyle choices. Herein lies the most serious criticism of boboism, which Brooks turns tail and scampers away from: it is shallow, especially when confronting questions of life, death and eternity. Bobos too will die, no matter how many decaf lattes they drink, no matter how often they get in tune with nature's rhythms on their eco-holidays. So is the bobo way of life here to stay, like Brooks thinks? I doubt it. Their upper-middle class sensibilities will surely long be with us, but who knows what fashions they'll adopt when their current bohemian trendiness goes stale? For now, though, they're infesting America much as the yuppies once did, and Brook's entertaining book at least gives us the chance to chuckle about it.
Rating:
Summary: Bobo's Unite
Review: 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...
Rating:
Summary: Clever and fun
Review: 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.
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Summary: So True
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Faux beaus
Review: This is a glib, semi-satirical look at the latest incarnation of yuppy baby boomers. Unfortunately, David Brooks is too fond of his subject for the satire to have much bite. The most disturbing thing about this book is that Brooks is insightful enough to see through the silliness, pretensions and superficiality of these people and idealizes them anyway. Bobos is actually quite a cynical book. For example, after thoroughly exposing the vacuous nature of modern "intellectuals" --dilettantes who care more about grants and social status than ideas, Brooks inexplicably maintains they are an improvement over intellectuals of previous decades. Bobos in Paradise is largely an exercise in denial. Brooks wants us (and himself no doubt) to believe that Bobos are cute, brilliant and idealistic and their flaws trivial. Furthermore, he argues that they are the new ruling class. This is more self-delusion on his part. The fact is, bobos are too content in their little cocoons of consumption to attempt to conquer the world. They are merely a faction of the upper middle class (not upper class as Brooks states) who are not well represented in the upper echelons of government or finance. When it comes down to it, bobos are merely the latest version of the self-absorbed bourgeois. The very way Brooks exaggerates their influence is a perfect example of their narcissism.
Rating:
Summary: The new upper crass
Review: I was wondering who's responsible for the insipidness,pompousness,new age drivel,$5 coffee,lip service paying and logoizing the world we see so regularly in our new gilded anticulture.Now I know their name:the Bobos.These individuals pretend they are not "establishment" but their faux too-hip pretenses only betrays them worse.It appeared at the outset that Brooks was going to whack these jive turkey's like they deserve,but by books end he practically was apologizing for them.It's not that the Bobos are bad people, but their phonyness is intolerable.These are the people who head environmental groups,preach recycling,etc. but in everyday life drive their gas gulpers,buy homes out in unincorporated areas with lax environmental standards and bring with them the o so familiar pillars of their banality:strip malls every block,the same Mcdonalds and Gap stores and cookie cutter neighborhoods.The Bobos are incapable of creating any kind of real culture.They are thoroughly establishment,hence,money is their true guide, and all their pretenses cannot hide the fact.A fairly good book but it would have been nice if the subject wasn't treated with kid gloves.We need someone to rake the Bobos over the coals like they deserve.
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