When I read that Bobos* stood for Bourgeois Bohemians with the subtitle The New Upper Class and How They Got There, I expected a rather pedantic study. The jacket illustration by Gary Overacre, a clever superimposition of Bobos over the lush Rousseau landscape painting, "Dreams," should have alerted me that this discussion of the intersection of the "pedigreed elite" and "genius and geniality" would be jovial and unselfconscious. Brooks designates his Bobos as "the cultural consequence of the information age," but rather than pelting his readers with a barrage of further reportage, he analyzes with spirited badinage — and self-admitted membership—the influence of this new "meritocracy." While devoted to their satisfying, often-hard won professional careers, meritocrats are far more concerned with not appearing overly ambitious. They inhabit "that weird hybrid zone, where creativity and commerce intersect," where "to calculate a person’s status, you take his net worth and multiply it by his antimaterialistic attitudes." Intellectual life in the 21st century is, for Brooks, a "mixture of careerism and altruism."

Providing selective background, Brooks demonstrates a solid knowledge of earlier research, citing Conant and Chauncey’s pioneering work establishing the SAT as societal leveler in the search for higher education. He also mentions C. Wright Mills’ seminal study The Power Elite, counterpointing it with Richard Hofstater’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life and Jacques Barzun’s The House of Intellect, both of which he clearly knows well. Providing passing nods to Freud, Marx, and Darwin, Brooks distills the old left-wing mantra to: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his abilities."

Concluding his eight-point chapter on Consumption with "Bobos possess the Midas touch in reverse. Everything we handle turns to soul," Brooks jabs gently at consumerism: "Nor is it ever enough to just buy something; one has to be able to discourse upon it. That is why, for example, the Lands’ [sic] End catalogue doesn’t just show off, say, a nice tweed jacket. It has little bits of text all around describing the Celtic roots of tweed, explaining why the best lambswool is sheared in the first six months of a lamb’s life, and noting that the jacket is made by adorable old men with lined faces. The Lands’ End people surround their advertisement with edifying articles by such writers as Garrison Keillor to let us know that the document we hold in our hands is not merely a catalogue but is actually one of those money-losing highbrow magazines. In this and a myriad other ways, the companies that sell to us have developed careful marketing strategies for people who disdain marketing. They help make shopping seem a bit like an honors project at Bennington College." This type of wry and pointed humor propels Bobos in Paradise. Brooks’s unembellished style crystallizes the sad fact that the Bobos only think they’re in paradise.

Despite references to individuals trying to claw to the top of this meritocracy as "buttboys," Brooks shows a surprisingly literary penchant by saying that if T. S. Eliot were alive today and so inclined, he would name a store "Objective Correlatives." Largely anecdotal, Bobos is organized from "The Rise of the Educated Class," in which Brooks explains why the Ivy League and Seven Sister schools resemble their ’50s selves only in architecture and expense, through a final chapter on "Politics and Beyond."

The second to last chapter, "The Spiritual Life" is one of the most provocative in the book. In a seemingly self-deprecating manner, Brooks situates himself solitary on a rock in the Big Blackfoot River, where "I am sitting here waiting for one of those perfect moments when time stops and I feel myself achieving a mystical communication with nature. But nothing’s happening. I’ve been hanging around this magnificent setting for 30 minutes and I haven’t had one moment of elevated consciousness…It occurs to me that maybe it’s too late in the season for transcendence … I look at my watch and realize I had better start feeling a serene oneness with God pretty soon. I’ve got dinner reservations back in Missoula at six." Ultimately relegating 21st century spirituality to "Flexidoxy," Brooks concludes that it is too "tepid and undemanding." I would add that the absence of apparent gratitude and worship characterizes the meritocrats’ attempt at transcendent universality, a paradoxical — and improbable — religion without rigor.

Also absent in Brooks’ analysis is mention of women as significant money earning/spending entities. There is humor and pathos in his presentation of weddings of the 1950s, in which mothers of the bride, as well as the bride herself, emphasized background and breeding. Juxtaposed to the weddings of the ’90s, which place educational levels and professional attainments in the foreground for both men and women, his comments are telling.