Rating: 
Summary: This book is for intelligent people w/ good sense of humor
Review: I am in the same Comp Lit class as Monkeyface, (it's actually called Multicultural American Literature), although I think Monkeyface is in the afternoon class and I am in the morning class. Monkeyface is basically parroting the rest of the class's opinion on this book, one that I disagree with. I will admit that I was in the minority in class, because for some reason most people hated it (especially this palistinian girl who was extremely anti-semitic), but I can tell you why. Monkeyface (what an intelligent moniker that is) and the rest of the nay-sayers basically just did not get the book at all. For instance, ther is one passage where Mr Epstein describes his having just bought a new Jaguar (a snob vehicle, you might say). Well, in a hilarious tongue in cheek sort of way he says "I tell myself that I bought it for its intrinsic value" or something like that. Now, if you understand the humor behind the phrase "I tell myself" then you know that he is poking fun at his own snobbish car purchase. In fact, I e-mailed him regarding this passage, and mine is the correct interpretation. Well, the class displayed mass stupidity and literally said "look at how naive he is. He actually thinks he bought the Jag for its intrinsic value" How asinine. Then it basically just became popular to condemn the book, and everyone got on the bandwagon. Well, almost everyone. So I tell you what. If you think you are intelligent & have a witty, finely honed sene of humor, go ahead & give this book a try. If not, please go back to watching TV and leave books like this for those who can appreciate it.
Rating: 
Summary: Some jokes, but rather unexpectedly insecure at times
Review: I didn't think this book had the self-assurance or tolerance of Jasper Griffin's *Snobs*, nor the built-in crud detector found in Paul Fussell's books *Class* and *BAD*, or in the writings of Kingsley Amis, Dawn Powell, Gore Vidal, the poems of Gavin Ewart. To take one example, in Epstein's book writer Gore Vidal is a snob because he prefers living in Europe rather than the US of America, and is accussed of social climbing because of the people he consorts with. But social climbing is a middle class phenomenon, and Vidal was born into a Washington power family, as Louis Auchincloss was born into a New York one, consequently they consort with the kind of people they grew up with. The reader does not have to belong to any other class but the middle to find this kind of envy and insecurity on Epstein's part spoiling the better parts of the book: basically you're not a snob if you come from a small town or tedious suburb and aspire to no more than a university teaching post or perhaps a move to the Big Apple (for an equally humble job), your creativity ceasing once you've attained those goals. You're not a snob if you pursue the mundane, you ARE a snob if you've got real talent. Who can blame Gore Vidal for wanting to live in Europe rather than Epstein's home town dump of Chicago? But then Vidal can get to Europe, and has employed his writing talents to laugh and mock at cant, puffed-uppedness and the peculiar insecurities of those who live off art without producing it. Nevertheless a few good laughs, especially when Epstein talks about people like himself.
Rating: 
Summary: Who cares what Joseph Epstein thinks?
Review: I picked this book up at an airport bookstore because - after a few quick looks - it seemed worth paying for.I WAS SO WRONG! This book is filled with meanness after meanness. Epstein tells us in the first chapter that he is a snob - but he makes himself seem like a charming snob, reformed, almost repentant. NOT TRUE! This man drops name after name of people, books and artists (the more obscure the "better," of course). He goes on and on about his fancy (then fancier) raincoats. He envies poor dead Allan Bloom his possessions. And Epstein is so far gone that he even thinks stories of how he "used" his kids are winning. If only I could give this book negative stars!
If only I could get my money back.
Rating:
Summary: No Escape!
Review: In his characteristic style; serious, humorous, wry, and personal, Joseph Epstein examines the human expression of the universal biological phenomenon of 'pecking-order', from every conceivable angle. There is no escape! Self-revelatory as a personal essay must be, this is a personal book for the reader as well. No matter how much mental squirming one does, he finds a snobbery to fit. J.E hypothesizes that the fall of the WASP Society and the tendency toward homogenization of rank in our country has caused snobbery to proliferate. Analyzed into upward-seeking, downward-fearing and reverse-looking, snobs are to be found in every category of human endeavor, "except perhaps podiatry". Quotations from and referrals to famous writers and artists provide instances of snobbery in action. A glance at the 'blurbs' on the back of the dust jacket is well worth the reader's attention. While this is a very funny book, it is also a serious study of human relations in America, past and present.
Rating:
Summary: Elitist Condescention
Review: It's hard to believe an author who makes his living as a professor could find such light fare as subject matter. Perhaps it's because Mr. Epstein is just like those normal people who think they "have a book in them," as he writes in the New York Times in an OP-Ed, "but don't." Writing professors can't make a living from their work so they stay in school and are eventually hired to critique students; an environment that is bound to make one "smug" with a superiority complex. It's a safe cubicle compared to the real world outside of the University walls. Journalism professors I have known who have never written books love to berate "first person" stories from what they believe are amateurs and imposters. The implication is what could a normal person have done in life that is worth telling in a book? In some cases nothing, but it depends on the individual and the subject matter their lives have dealt with. Frequently, the snobbish literary publishing and media world go for the shallow while ignoring the relavant and deep. "Noisy waters run shallow," it has been said, and sometimes shallow is what sells at the expense of the deserving real scholarship, that lacks the marketing comsideration to reach an audience. Mr. Epstein is nothing more than a frustrated stand-up comic with media connections. That has nothing to do with talent, or message.
Rating: 
Summary: Epstein illuminates...
Review: Joe Epstein's book is a fascinating read. I enjoyed it a great deal. The book is at it's strongest when Epstein talks about his own snobbish tendencies. A few parts are a bit slow, particularly in the beginning, but your faith will be rewarded in the second part of the book when Epstein goes after various kinds of snobbery. The book is strengthed by Epstein's admission to his own snobberies--as they used to say it takes one to know one (and indeed as Epstein titles one chapter)--and can't help but have you look at yourself often. Epstein quotes many writers in his book and at times I wanted to shut the book rather than read another Balzac or Proust quote. Nevertheless, there are times when Epstein is so on target--particularly about the French--that you laugh out loud. I wonder what Epstein would say about all the media attention his book has been getting.... A great snapshot of America in the 21st century. We need more writers like him.
Rating:
Summary: amusing yourself by examining yourself
Review: Joseph Epstein seems to have had a lot of fun writing Snobbery: The American Version. Whether you will have fun reading it may depend on your tolerance for random foreign phrases. (Some of them sent me to the dictionary, such as "epater le bourgeois.") He's also not afraid of unpleasant self-examination ("Sometimes all it takes for me to drop an enthusiasm is the knowledge that someone I think commonplace has picked it up." p. 11). The mostly suppressed snob in me also couldn't resist chuckling at this: Donald Trump... his confident vulgarity... if he were to be certified as upper class, many others put into that category would doubtless do what they could to find another social class to fit into. (p. 68)
(Whew! I'm in no danger there!) Epstein's thesis is that few people in the U.S. are comfortable with themselves, what they have, and who they know. Snobbery lets us feel valued and gives order to our worlds. (He posits that, before the nineteenth century, snobbery did not exist because people were socially locked in place, unable to move up the social ladder.) He agrees with most people that snobbery is a shortcoming. ("[T]he snob... cannot seem to understand that only natural distinction and genuine good-heartedness are what truly matter." p. 247) But he also admits that he is unable to rid himself of it. ("If I didn't make these little judgments... I'd feel almost as if I didn't exist." p. 249) While he states that snobbery is foolish, he is also realist enough to know that it sometimes makes sense to take the snobbish path so that one doesn't later feel that one has missed out. He told his son to go to a "snob college" so that he wouldn't have to wonder for the rest of his life whether his life would have been better if he had. Epstein's son went to Stanford and agreed with his father - it wasn't such a superior academic experience, but was worth having been in on. The daughter of Jewish intellectuals, I found most useful his analysis of why Jews and homosexuals have become the "tastemakers" of our society through couture clothing, literary essays, and theater. He notes that, in the historically tenuous place of being Jewish or gay, one can't help but notice the subtle gradations of social class. Although he derides a culture of victimization (people claiming moral superiority due to the suffering of their ancestors), as many conservative writers do, Epstein's not immune to it. He says he prefers being a Jew in the US to being a Jew in Israel: "Being part of a small though active minority, I felt that I had an interesting angle..." (p. 167) This is a survey course in snobbery. The literary snobbery section alone could have easily become a book. The chapter on the modern anti-snobs could also have. The result of this broad-brush approach, though, is that you are bound to see the snobbery in some aspect of yourself. You will close this book wondering why you think what you think and why you criticize what you criticize. Part of this book's appeal is that Epstein makes you wonder about this without writing a self-help book or claiming to have the answers.
Rating:
Summary: Clueless in Chicago
Review: Joseph Epstein shares three characteristics with David Brooks, author of Bobos in Paradise: (1) they are both Midwesterners; (2) they both went to the University of Chicago which they believe makes them intellectuals; and (3) neither one of them knows a damned thing about the Northeast, the center of snobbery in America. That said, Mr. Epstein has still written an entertaining book that provides real insight into its subject. While repeatedly assuring his readers that he is not a snob himself (he clearly is a blistering snob), he provides a wonderful discussion of how snobbery permeates every social group in America. His descriptions of the groups he does know something about (Chicago Jews, University of Chicago intellectuals and a variety of celebrities that he has personally known) are both perceptive and entertaining. If you like this book, consider buying "Old Money" by Nelson Aldrich, a wealthy New Englander who provides a fine analysis of snobbery in that part of the world.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but palls; sympathy makes for better ethnography
Review: Mr Epstein's book (note the Anglo-/Francophile lack of a period in his title) has good opening chapters, but generally suffers from the limitations of his political views (how could an overview of American political snobs make only passing reference to Wm F. Buckley, of reverse-snobs fail to mention Pat Buchanan, of virtucrats omit William Bennett, of victimisation-mongers ignore Rush Limbaugh?) and from an unendingly mean-spirited tone unrelieved by sympathy (or, as the French say, 'rachmones'). Without sympathy, or much attempt to explain the etiology of snobbery, his book becomes a shallow exercise in simple mockery---it is no accident that his chapter on Jewish and gay snobbery improves the over-all tone of the book: there, for once, he shows some interest in _why_ some individuals become snobs, and doesn't imply that we are looking at an inborn flaw....come to think of it, the book could have benefitted from an examination of the Calvinist Elect/Preterite divide in the origins of American snobbery---in the absence of great humility, no snobbery can match that of the "I'm saved and you're damned because God wanted it that way," of many Believers.
Rating:
Summary: engrossing and witty, informative and perspicacious
Review: Northwestern University professor and writer Joseph Epstein's latest book, "Snobbery" is a highly entertaining and well-considered look into the world of the snob: the upward-looking, the downward-looking, the 'virtuous,' and the reverse types (to name but a few). His coverage is by no means comprehensive, for snobbery is truly a broad topic, but Epstein touches well on those aspects of "the grave but localized disease" that are frequently encountered, and that he is most familiar with. The book is divided into two parts. The first part (chapters one through ten) seeks (and finds) a fair definition of what snobbery is, explains how it works, and traces the history of snobbery in America from its revolutionary origins, to its classist WASP height, and finally to its omnipresent state in our current "egalitarian" times. Epstein makes especially good use of his popular self-deprecating humor in the first chapter, "It Takes One to Know One." The second part (chapters eleven through twenty-three) describes several prominent varieties of modern snobbery, such as college snobbery ("Jimmy goes to Rice, Jane goes to Vanderbilt"), club snobbery, intellectual snobbery, political snobbery, name-dropping, sexual and religious prejudice, celebrity hobnobbing, food and wine snobbery, and trend-following. The book is closed with a final chapter, the "Coda," where Epstein explains why he believes that snobbery, though it is a deplorable social practice, is here to stay. The mock reviews printed on the jacket's back cover (from Henry James, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, and Noel Coward) provide some good laughs for the familiar reader. I know that I gave a rather critical review of Epstein's earlier book, "Ambition" (c. 1980), but this new volume (though it addresses a related topic) is quite different. Epstein's writing here is very much of the current times, and his narrative never loses the reader's attention. Quotations are always brief and used to explain a point, not invoked merely for pedantic decoration. Rather than spending time on describing famous historical snobs (as was done in previous "snobographies" by Thackeray and the Duke of Bedford), Epstein concentrates more on exposing the practice of snobbery as it is seen in everyday life today, among his colleagues and acquaintances, in contemporary magazines, and (most insightfully) within his own thoughts. As he rightfully suspects, his detailed look at major types of snobbery lets very few people off the hook, and there is scarcely a reader out there who won't find his or her own pet version(s) of snobbery described within the book's pages. I have seen Epstein field questions from audience members during a book talk featured on C-SPAN2's "Book TV," and the identification of secret snobs through the Q&A session was remarkable. It truly "takes one to know one." For the reader who is observant and curious of snobbery today, and who is not ashamed to admit that s/he too may be a snob of sorts, this book is one to read soon.
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