Bobos in Paradise.

David Brooks. Bobos in Paradise. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Forty years ago it wasn't that difficult to distinguish between the "bourgeoisie" and the "counterculture." The former was comprised of individuals who worked for large corporations, dressed drably, and dutifully attended PTA meetings. The latter were intellectuals and artists. But now, according to David Brooks, the values of the countercultural 60s and the achieving 80s have melded to produce a new societal class that he calls "Bobos" -- bourgeois bohemians.

Brooks describes Bobos as the new highly educated upper-class elite in society who have been able to successfully combine the bohemian world of individualism and creativity with the bourgeois realm of conformity and acquisition. He says Bobos have replaced WASPS as society's leaders and they believe in things like meritocracy, civility, working hard on the job and at play, and buying stuff such as REI hiking boots, Range Rovers, and Starbucks coffee. Brooks also says Bobos are spiritually complacent, they prefer a moral style that doesn't shake things up, and that future generations may rebel against such complacency by becoming more committed to spiritual ideals.

My favorite chapter in the book was the one on "How to be an Intellectual Giant." In it Brooks lays down the rules of games-manship for aspiring pundits with pointers on how to pick a specialty that is likely to be in the news, how to behave on talk shows, and how to persuade editors of the instant relevance of a news article. If you are yearning for media stardom you need to read this chapter.

I found Bobos in Paradise to be a most informative and compelling account of an important cultural consequence of the information age in which we live.

Whether you are a Bobo, aspire to be one, or yearn for the "good old days" when capitalism and the counterculture were an either-or proposition, I think you will find lots to enjoy in this serious yet witty sociological study.