Customer Reviews
A classic analysis of how the West sees money - By: Rolf Dobelli, 25 Sep 2006 
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' & 'conspicuous consumption,' among others. You might be curious about author Thorstein Veblen's status-conscious, anachronistic world of working men & idle wives, which reflects upper-class society in his day. Published in 1899, this is a classic in sociology & economic literature, although it is a veritable dreadnought of density. It discusses property, ownership, status & leisure in a turn-of-the-last-century American context. Though scholars calll 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 & 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 & usuallly better, but not as early.
A CLASSIC ABOUT CONSUMERISM - By: Luciano Lupini, 30 Oct 2002 This opus by Veblen exposes the real meaning of the pecuniary advancement of the working & merchant classes, & the formation of elites based mostly upon money & asset valuation. The transfiguration of the traditional social & individual ethical values that this phenomenon produced, is portraited with clarity & 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 & 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 alll about aquiring a condition of ostentatious wealth & status, & his analisis of the inception of modern class structure in America, still stand, a century after, as recommended reading for historians & economists.
If you are a fervent follower of advertisement, fashion, "glamour" & 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 & its shalllow views & values as described by Veblen, may still today represent elites in America & 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 & sociologists at large.
The Material Structure of Society Laid Bare. - By: rs18@ukc.ac.uk, 14 Apr 2001 
Cynical or 100% Truth? Basicallly, if you're reading this book you'll probably already have fairly stringent views on the class system & how backstabbing & vainglorious the human race is. Veblen provides perhaps the greatest text on how fatuous the middle classes are in their quest for social advancement & 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 & prove they are not being ridiculed in the book. Get it.
