Rating: 
Summary: Revelatory. A Must-Read for those Who Crossed the Divide
Review: Al Lubrano deserves the collective thanks of all of us who have crossed the formidable class divide for writing such a revealing exposition on class in America. This book is not some abstruse academic treatise on social conditions. It is a very readable insight on what it is like to cross from the working-class world to that of the college-educated professional, written by a keen-eyed, nose-to-the-ground news reporter.The other reviews here capture well the essence of Lubrano's message on the challenges "Straddlers" face in their difficult journey across class lines. I particularly value his commentary on cultural capital -- "the collective
advantages of the middle and upper classes." I, too, am an Italian-American rooted in the working class who transitioned to the Ivy League (also Columbia) and, from there, into the elitist, very WASPy, upper & upper middle class U.S. Foreign Service. I, too, have confronted obliqueness in professional relations and bureaucratic treachery, blatant self-promotion by colleagues and the assumption by my fellow diplomats that they are the heirs of success. But it is the class tribalism that has proven so fascinating and mysterious to me. Assignments to the choicest diplomatic posts (particularly in W. Europe) always seem to be traded among the same group of friends; fast promotions largely go a pre-selected cabal of fair-haired boys and girls who are inducted early on into a select circle of like-minded people largely from the same kind of social bacground: college-educated parents, suburban/urban-bred, upper middle class or higher, usually WASP. I found that inclusion of "he marches to his own drum" in my personnel evaluations proved to be not commendatory, but damning in that peculiarly indirect way white-collar professionals can be. As a blue-collar type whose father didn't complete high school, I was clueless starting out as to the secret social codes, nuanced manner of speaking and honed, behind-the-scenes schmoozing required to be tacitly accepted as part of the Club. At the same time, my family regards me as some sort of mutant who has been transformed into something unrecognizable by a world that is very alien to them. I have recommended Lubrano's book to the small handful of other diplomatic colleagues I know who are also "Straddlers." This has sparked a lively exchange sharing experiences and views. One reaction we all have in common is how much Lubrano's book has opened our eyes. The "Aha!" factor features prominantly in our discussions. As Cassius said, "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves." The blue-collar denizen seeking to ensconce him/herself in the white collar professional world faces deeper obstacles than appears at first on the surface. While we face disadvantages in advancement by dint of our origins, we nonetheless greatly benefit from the down-home values with which we are brought up. It is a subject well worth further exploration and Lubrano has helped open up a new vista for us all.
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read for Teachers
Review: Alfred Lubrano's book is a must read for teachers at all levels. He articulates the reasons why higher education can be challenging even for an intelligent student if they come from the working class. In a couple of his case studies, Lubrano describes Straddlers who had teachers confirm their low self esteem by suggesting they were not college material. Others were undoubtedly inspired and motivated by excellent teachers. It seems to me that a good teacher who is sensitive to the predicament of Straddlers can help their students bridge the enormous gap between their working class roots and the education and white collar careers to which they aspire.
Another point I took away from this book is one the author didn't overtly state but came out in some of the anecdotes: don't pretend class differences don't exist, but do have a sense of humor about it.
Rating: 
Summary: Well-written, somewhat whiny; book leaves readers in limbo
Review: Alfred Lubrano's Limbo ponders the duality of white collar professionals with blue collar roots. Chock-full of blue collar-style anecdotes and ivory tower citations, the book itself reflects Lubrano's place in two colourful worlds. Lubrano describes the role of class in various aspects of society, and paints a picture of the trials and tribulations of people who seek to change their shirt collars. While the book's overall tone, style and story prove compelling, the narrative falls short on occasion. Lubrano's portrayal of white collar life ranges from idyllic to whiny. However, to be fair, his descriptions of blue collar lifestyles sometimes cover a similar range. The writer's struggle with love and hate for both worlds emerges. Perhaps picking up from his journalism background, Lubrano often sticks to extremes. His white collar socialites appear to all have money, cottages, fantastic vacations, mansions, and Ivy League degrees. This is more the stuff of the upper- and upper-middle classes. Likewise, the families Lubrano's blue collar workers toil, sweat, and ache, rarely straying to books, college, arts, and other middle-class capital -- while their rare child somehow becomes an executive at a major firm. This may simply be a reflection of the people Lubrano interviewed, but, for many people, reality is much more mixed, with fewer extremes. Still, journalism depends on concepts between which the reader can easily distinguish, leading this drawback to perhaps be a matter of style. Moving within these extremes of white and blue, Limbo's conclusion leaves the reader in limbo. With little advice or revelation of how collar-changers do or can succeed, Limbo seems mired in its own duality. The book suggests little hope of escape from the struggle, let alone a return to the blue collar world or a full move to white collar life. As in a dictionary, Limbo is between Heaven and Hell, full of unbaptised innocents, an intermediate place on the fringe. The book captures and reflects the place of the collar-changer.
Rating:
Summary: Very insightful read
Review: As a Straddler, I found this book immensely helpful. I can now see where I still hold both working class and middle class attitudes, understand why and make more conscious life choices. Lubrano has produced a very important book that goes a long way toward explaining the schizoid state of our national mind. Well-written and a compelling read. I recommend it highly, whether you're trying to understand yourself, your parents or the continuous class clash. In particular, the interviews and stories about people moving between classes was enlightening.
Rating:
Summary: Honest Discussion and Excellent Research on a Taboo Topic
Review: As a Straddler, I found this book immensely helpful. I can now see where I still hold both working class and middle class attitudes, understand why and make more conscious life choices. Lubrano has produced a very important book that goes a long way toward explaining the schizoid state of our national mind. Well-written and a compelling read. I recommend it highly, whether you're trying to understand yourself, your parents or the continuous class clash. In particular, the interviews and stories about people moving between classes was enlightening.
Rating:
Summary: Uncovering the real causes of Social ills
Review: Brilliant! A wonderful, skillfully written and insightful work that I'd recommend to anyone with two firing neurons. It spoke eloquently and forcefully to my own semi-blue collar with white collar aspirations upbringing. More importantly, it described in excruiating detail with pinpoint accuracy what my own parents experienced as young adults in the 1950's through the 1970's. They were respectively, the 1st gen child of Northern Europeon immigrants [dad] and 2nd gen but raised by immigrants from Poland child [mom]. Both my parents worked strictly white collar jobs [note I did not write "careers"] until their early 40's then finally experienced financial success. They were viewed as "climbers" by their respective families, much to their dismay. My dad was a senior salesman for a technical products manufacturer and mom a licensed interior designer. Neither had a college degree, which was not unusual back then. This meant they had not only glimpses of but meaningful interaction with the upper classes, always as the tolerated but not accepted "poorer couple". ha! My father drove a Lincoln most of his adult life, and they both scorned anything foreign in the auto category. We ate good "American" food, nothing "fancy" as they put it. Both had a genuine love of reading and passed that along to myself. Despite knowing early on about class distinctions in this allegedly democratic meritocracy, I thank my parents for having the good common sense [in the 1960's-70's] to openly discuss class distinctions. While we lived in nice neighborhoods in Chicago, we didn't live above strictly middle-class. Vacations were always drive-aways to Wisconsin. If that. Later both moved up to become technically upper-middle income, but both retained all the values and views of having grown up in working class homes. They passed that on to myself as their daughter. I've passed it on to my own son, now 25 years old. Who decided to drop out of college though he's a brilliant young guy with incredible artistic and technical skills [mostly self taught]. The best my husband and I could provide, as neither of us has completed a college degree, was a middle class lifestyle. We've had what I'd deem modest success given the lack of degrees, primarily because we're voracious readers, self educators and activists. It's true that we're often assumed to be well educated due to manner of speech, demeanor, interests, life-style, knowledge base and etiquette. But I know what I am [pretender to the lifestyle!], who I came from and why. As does my glorified blue-collar spouse [general construction manager w/some college and industry training]. This book ably and meaningfully explores and exposes the outsider feelings and difficulties we Straddlers and our families experience not having grown up well-off and connnected. We both share many of the same experiences in work and private life that those interviewed in the book did. The vast class divide, outlined by other reviewers here. I'm going to make sure my son reads this tome, as he's been faced with exactly the same form of invisible discrimination and classism though he's of a different generation and we've never been blue collar, though we are "just" working people with better vocabularies and tastes.
Rating:
Summary: Deserves credit for raising the issue
Review: First of all, what a great idea for a book. Reading it is a validating experience for someone who has moved up a social notch or two. It helps you identify and explore your own psychological dissonance from being stretched between two worlds. And I finished the book feeling better about it.
Now a couple of critiques: I agree with another reviewer that Lubrano paints the social classes in swaths that are way too broad. Families with yachts who have been wealthy for generations are not middle class or upper middle class or just "white collar." They are rich elites. And there are lots more of them in the Northeast, where Lubrano has lived, than there are elsewhere in the U.S.
And I think there is a tendency among bright people to rebel against the circumstances into which they were born regardless of class. That is, some white-collar born sons won't take over the family business or accept their share of the money, any more than Lubrano would have started laying concrete block. They probably experience the same kinds of feelings of displacement as blue-collars who ascend to the middle class. And this feeling is probably similar to that of second-generation children of immigrants -- it's about moving into a new culture.
Also, I think Lubrano over-universalizes his own experience. His family culture in Brooklyn as a working-class Italian-American kid was probably more different than a black kid's from South Georgia, for instance (or mine in suburban Atlanta) than he thinks. And for having interviewed 100 people, he keeps coming back to the same dozen or two over and over during the book.
But I sense that Lubrano wouldn't mind my critiques, since he accomplished what he sought to -- he made me think about what strong a role class schizophrenia has played in my life. You can quibble with the details, but the premise rings true.
Rating:
Summary: A Confirmed "Straddler"
Review: For the first time, someone has succeeded in explaining to me why I always felt so diffrerent from my middle class colleagues and friends. Those who grew up and moved up from a working class family will find themsevlves in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Blue Collar Values Ring True
Review: For those of you who saw John Turturro's semi-autobiographical movie "MAC," the scene where Mac stops his car to watch a bricklayer build a wall is a nutshell version of what the movie was about. Namely, the work ethic of the blue collar worker and taking pride in that work in a world where how one talks about work becomes more important than the work product. In Limbo, a virtual son of MAC winds his way through the maze of white collar upper class norms, performing a balancing act between improving his lot in life without betraying the values instilled in him by his family. Surely, the upper class "bobos" as some people call them don't spend any time considering things like "honoring" their family or the old neighborhood. Instead, these "chosen" ones lead a self centered life devoid of such self examination. Having never known despair, how could they? The author clearly demonstrates something that my family stressed to us, that its better to have a good life than an easy life. In my own life, I get angry with the people who give me the blank stares when I tell them I went through college on the G.I. bill. Not only do they and their family find this unimaginable, they don't know anyone in their family who ever has served in the military. That was for "other" people. Recently, there has been two bills introduced in the House that would bring back the draft. Only this time, there will be no student deferrments or marital deferrments. Ah, the panic amongst the middle and upper class begins. "Send my child to fight a war?" no way. Soon, the soccer moms will be crowding the highways on their way to war protests. The irony will escape them. Bobos in Paradise indeed. Limbo is a great book that should be a staple in every sociology 101 class in every college. Some self examination by college students will be good for them. A few years in the military wouldn't hurt either.
Rating:
Summary: Great book, some problems
Review: Great book: This is a topic I've been waiting to read about. As a psychologist in NYC (born in Brooklyn!!) I have worked with this issue over and over again. NY attracts the bright and ambitious, but many have moved here from bluer collars in New England, the South, the Midwest, in search of career advancement. I have seen them in therapy, when somehow a depression sets in during the midst of a "successful" career. Lubrano deserves praise for bringing this issue "out of the closet" and shows respect for the struggles of the bright achiever, doing it mostly on their own. I wonder why so many of the (upper) "middle class" have more contempt than admiration for this achievement
Some Problems: In comparing blue/white collar, Lubrano jumps from "middle class/white collar" to "upper-middle/upper class" too often. Although he makes a good distinction between "blue-collar" and "others", many "white -collars (middle-middle)" are nowhere as priviledged as he claims. Ivy League to me is "upper-middle", most sons of major CEO's, governors of states, etc. are "upper". While I totally agree with Lubrano's concepts, he often jumps a step (or 2 or 3) between his roots and the classes he describes. Also, I think the analysis could be a bit sharper, and the book a bit better organized, less repetitious.
Nevertheless, Thank You!!!
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