Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There

In this witty and bestselling look at the cultural consequences of the information age, David Brooks coins a new word, Bobo, to describe today’s upper class—those who have wed the bourgeois world of capitalist enterprise to the hippie values of the bohemian counterculture.

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? Do you work for one of those visionary software companies where people come to work wearing hiking boots and glacier glasses, as if a wall of ice were about to come sliding through the parking lot? If so, you might be a Bobo.

David Brooks writes a biweekly opinion column for The New York Times and appears regularly on PBS NewsHour and NPR’s All Things Considered. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.