The Theory of the Leisure Class (Dover Thrift)

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Editorial reviews

Synopsis
Veblen's classic study indicts the nineteenth-century socio-economic system which based class status on the accumulation of material wealth.

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Customer reviews

review by: getabstract.com date: 2006-09-25 rating:
A classic analysis of how the West sees money
This may not be a book to read for recreation, unless you like 1890s verbal locutions, but there are other reasons to read it. The emergence of the economic analysis of Western society might intrigue you. You might discover the origins of such still useful terms as 'leisure class' and 'conspicuous consumption,' among others. You might be curious about author Thorstein Veblen's status-conscious, anachronistic world of working men and idle wives, which reflects upper-class society in his day. Published in 1899, this is a classic in sociology and economic literature, although it is a veritable dreadnought of density. It discusses property, ownership, status and leisure in a turn-of-the-last-century American context. Though scholars call it a 'satire,' the book is neither witty nor ironic. Instead, it is a stolid analytical daguerreotype of a world long gone. We suggest that if you tackle Veblen's old-fashioned, slow-flowing prose, you should do it for the background you may glean and the scholarly satisfaction you may feel when you are done. Instead of Alexander Pope's, 'What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed,' this book presents what oft was said and usually better, but not as early.

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review by: date: 2002-10-30 rating:
A CLASSIC ABOUT CONSUMERISM
This opus by Veblen exposes the real meaning of the pecuniary advancement of the working and merchant classes, and the formation of elites based mostly upon money and asset valuation. The transfiguration of the traditional social and individual ethical values that this phenomenon produced, is portraited with clarity and sarcastic intelligence by the author in the book, first published in 1899.
Now a classic of economic theory, as well as a text book of social science, it describes the tendencies of consumerism, leisure and the "materialization" of the ideals of the aspiring new princes (or noveau rich) of society. Veblen's vibrant satire of the tendency of the modern individual to believe that real accomplishment is all about aquiring a condition of ostentatious wealth and status, and his analisis of the inception of modern class structure in America, still stand, a century after, as recommended reading for historians and economists.
If you are a fervent follower of advertisement, fashion, "glamour" and other modern expressions of consumerism , then you will find a surprisingly fresh portrait of yourself in this book. It worries me that the leisure class and its shallow views and values as described by Veblen, may still today represent elites in America and their religion, as analyzed by professor Lash in his last book "The Revolt of the Elites". I highly recommend Veblen's best book, to scholars and sociologists at large.


review by: date: 2001-04-14 rating:
The Material Structure of Society Laid Bare.
Cynical or 100% Truth? Basically, if you're reading this book you'll probably already have fairly stringent views on the class system and how backstabbing and vainglorious the human race is. Veblen provides perhaps the greatest text on how fatuous the middle classes are in their quest for social advancement and the pathetic bathos they cling to as a means of achieving this. Attitudes derrided, this is a truly ace book that many a richkid hippy anarchist will possess to try and prove they are not being ridiculed in the book. Get it.

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