Snobbery: The American Version
by Joseph Epstein
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Description
Joseph Epstein's witty new book surveys American snobbery after the fall of the old Wasp culture of prep schools, Ivy League colleges, cotillions, debutante balls, the Social Register, and the rest of it. With ample humor and insight, Epstein uncovers the new outlets upon which the old snobbery has fastened: food and wine, fashion, high-achieving children, schools, politics, health, being with-it, name-dropping, and much else, including the roles of Jews and homosexuals in the development of show more snobbery. Playing throughout the book is the question of whether snobbery is part of human nature.--From publisher description. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Witty, erudite, effortlessly constructed and studded with 5-dollar words I don't know but would like to learn. Epstein is the new half-brother to my favorite family of writers, sitting at Thankgiving between Anne Fadiman and Joan Didion, across the table from Bill Bryson and Phillip Lopate. These are my heroes, men and women who take often pedestrian subjects and light them with bottle rockets from the inside. I hope to have a literary legacy like theirs someday. And as I practice, I read books like these to imagine what I could aim for in the meantime.
Will grab another Epstein right soon. I'm thinking In a Cardboard Belt
Occasionally droll but often irritating tour of the various forms of snobbery inherent in American life. The author, a professor of literature at Northwestern, ostensibly aims to puncture the pretensions of snobbery even as he engages in them himself; the book's fundamental assertions are confused and self-contradictory.
If you like.. Class by Paul Fussel
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Author Information
48+ Works 3,143 Members
Joseph Epstein is the author of the best-selling Snobbery and Friendship, as well as the short story collections. The Goldin Boys, Fabulous Small Jews, and Frozen in Time, among other books, and was formerly editor of the American Scholar. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, and other magazines. In 2003 he was show more awarded the National Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush along with John Updike, Hal Holbrook, and Robert Ballard. A longtime teacher of English at Northwestern University, he lives in Evanston, Illinois. show less
Awards and Honors
Awards
Distinctions
Common Knowledge
- Dedication
- For Kathleen and Lily
My California Girls
Classifications
- Genres
- Sociology, Nonfiction, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 305.50973 — Social sciences Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Groups of people People by social and economic levels History, geographic treatment, biography North America United States
- LCC
- HN90 .S6 .E67 — Social sciences Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform Social history and conditions. Social problems. By region or country
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 521
- Popularity
- 57,132
- Reviews
- 4
- Rating
- (3.31)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 4
- UPCs
- 2
- ASINs
- 4
