Bobos in Paradise

The New Upper Class and How They Got There

By: David Brooks

Narrated by: David Brooks

It used to be pretty easy to distinguish between the bourgeois world of capitalism and the bohemian counterculture. The bourgeois worked for corporations, wore gray, and went to church. The bohemians were artists and intellectuals. Bohemians championed the values of the liberated 1960s; the bourgeois were the enterprising yuppies of the 1980s.
But now the bohemian and the bourgeois are all mixed up, as David Brooks explains in this brilliant description of upscale culture in America. It is hard to tell an espresso-sipping professor from a cappuccino-gulping banker. Laugh and sob as you read about the information age economy's new dominant class. Marvel at their attitudes toward morality, sex, work, and lifestyle, and at how the members of this new elite have combined the values of the countercultural sixties with those of the achieving eighties. These are the people who set the tone for society today, for you. They are bourgeois bohemians: Bobos.
Are you a Bobo?
• Do you believe that spending $15,000 on a media center is vulgar, but that spending $15,000 on a slate shower stall is a sign that you are at one with the Zenlike rhythms of nature?
• Does your newly renovated kitchen look like an aircraft hangar with plumbing? Did you select your new refrigerator on the grounds that mere freezing isn't cold enough?
• Would you spend a little more for socially conscious toothpaste -- the kind that doesn't actually kill germs, it just asks them to leave?
• 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?
• Do you think your educational credentials are just as good as those of the shimmering couples on the New York Times weddings page?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, you are probably a member of today's new upper class. Even if you didn't, you'd still better pay attention, because these Bobos define our age. Their hybrid culture is the atmosphere we breathe. Their status codes govern social life, and their moral codes govern ethics and influence our politics. Bobos in Paradise is a witty and serious look at the cultural consequences of the information age and a penetrating description of how we live now.©2000 David Brooks; (P)2000 Random House, Inc.

oh cool

I'm a big cliché. Good to know. I gotta stop with all this uniqueness nonsense.

He Nails It

Interesting and funny. I often laughed out loud while listening, yet I came away convinced that Mr. Brooks' concept of "Bobo" might actually describe something real. The book is now 11 years old yet still pretty much describes this phenomenon.

Sometimes it Seems Too Far

When we expect the unexpected, we usually discover that old and sacred truth - what comes around goes around. Or as they used to say in the 60's, "You are what you eat!" Bobos in Paradise is a twist on this ilk and noteable exception to the "Got ya - you're an idiot" school of social observation. But like watching whales in Baja California, far too much of the action takes place below water and out of site. None-the-less, for those looking for challenging yet glissful read in the hammock with a cool lemonade in hand (or is it visa-versa), this may be a book which you might not want to miss.

Hilarious

This book is hilarious, insightful, and still accurate after 20 years. Light and easy read.

Eye Opening, Educational, Funny

I found Bobos to be eye opening about upper class culture, and refreshing to listen to. Yes, I sometimes got lost in the constant sense of irony and sarcasm that Brooks carries in his voice. But it was funny! I'm normally not into social science. And while I wouldn't exactly call this "science," it did deliver a lot of information that would have been rather dry to choke down some other way. But with Brooks' style, I laughed and learned. It's like edutainment.