Rating: 
Summary: Not what I expected . . .
Review: . . . But an enjoyable read just the same. It read like an easy fiction novel. I had been expecting more of a business/marketing approach to culture and was somewhat disappointed. However, Seabrook has an engaging style and I do look forward to reading his work in the future. Next time I will approach it with a more frivolous attitude.
Rating: 
Summary: A personal view of the state of "culture"
Review: A very enjoyable read; Seabrook is a fine writer. He covers his cultural background with self-deprecating style. He interviews George Lucas, David Geffen and others.I had expected more of a business book--How to Market Culture or Lack Thereof--and this is not that. I'm from Silicon Valley--we don't relate to Seabrook's Manhattan town house experience with the New Yorker magazine. But his opinions and experiences make for a cultural vacation of sorts. He writes well, and he must be on to something--looking around at the turn of the century I had almost neglected to ask, "Why did we build all those opera houses and art museums, anyway?" Something about "culture" has profundly shifted and fairly recently--Seabrook is an entertaining detective with a somewhat inconclusive report.
Rating: 
Summary: An Overblown New Yorker Article
Review: Although the title looked enticing, I was greatly disappointed as I read this slim volume. I was vaguely told what "Nobrow" was, but no whys, no wherefores. Was it a celebration of Nobrow or a critique? The book contains profiles of what the author sees as noted Nobrow figures, like David Geffen and George Lucas. They seemed to be re-edited New Yorker articles, and are nice as they go, but after 200 or so pages, I still don't have much of a clue as to what Nobrow really is. I did, however, learn who the author was. He seems to be the sub-text of this book. We know he is a feature writer at the New Yorker, a Princeton grad, and lives somewhere in Tribeca. If you want to read a book about today's culture and its roots, read Thomas Franks' The Conquest of Cool. If you want to read a book about the New Yorker, try Bright Lights, Big City. At least it's more honest.
Rating: 
Summary: author disses nobrow -- but then joins the pack
Review: Author Seabrook takes major potshots at (amongst others) Conde Nast's New Yorker Magazine, which he acknowledges has become less an intellectual exercise than a cultural monitor of our marketing state, which it was never designed to be. Here his assessment of what The New Yorker stood for is right on the money. He quickly points out that these changes are all thanks to the editor in chief Tina Brown, then brand-spanking new (and prior to her departure for Talk Magazine). Having spent many pages dissecting how The New Yorker has run itself into the ground by covering media-friendly topics (the antithesis of intellect) and hiring illustators to provide provocative art to gussy up their dreadfully dull covers, he then is cornered by Brown who gives him a Lowbrow celebrity profile assignment. AND HE TAKES IT! Thus buying into the behavior he classifies as Nobrow. ...
Rating:
Summary: Read for yourself
Review: DECIDE FOR YOURSELF, despite the well-organized and well-orchestrated spewings below, especially from NYC.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Review: Good insights about how areas (he'd say all, I say some) of our culture have blurred highbrow and lowbrow into.... unibrow. But his prose is flat. Unlively, almost throughout. And some of the pieces are retroactively fitted with the "nobrow" vocabulary and epiphanies, you'll be able to feel -- if you wanted to, you could prolly go back and check their original New Yorker appearances. And so, they feel forced. So, no. Don't buy it -- rent it.
Rating:
Summary: insightful but scattered and dull, dull, dull.
Review: Good insights about how areas (he'd say all, I say some) of our culture have blurred highbrow and lowbrow into.... unibrow. But his prose is flat. Unlively, almost throughout. And some of the pieces are retroactively fitted with the "nobrow" vocabulary and epiphanies, you'll be able to feel -- if you wanted to, you could prolly go back and check their original New Yorker appearances. And so, they feel forced. So, no. Don't buy it -- rent it.
Rating:
Summary: Almost comforting, in a weird way
Review: How can one be criticize culture when the absolute standards of measurement have been replaced by cultural relativism? The answer wouldn't satisfy fans of Robert Pirsig; Quality has been replaced by "Authenticity", which is generally defined as whatever the opinion polls say it is. Although Seabrook is no sociologist, this very interesting behind-the-scenes look at big-time media players is enjoyable food for thought, and even strangely comforting.
Rating:
Summary: Better than it seemed
Review: I bought this book expecting it to be witty, which it was, but I also expected it to be like other books on Pop Culture - to at the same time mourn the death of high culture, while name-dropping and making sure that the text contained enough pop-cult references to stay hip. Seabrook is smarter than this, and the theme of his book - the collapsing of systems of taste - is very much the story of his writing the book. It seems impossible to write about pop culture without showing off, without dropping names, without, as Seabrook says, "Stealing their buzz." And while he's as guilty of this as anyone, he is at least aware of the problem. The punchline is, I think he manages to express what it is about popular culture that is so seductive to those writing about it.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Topic
Review: I enjoyed the writing of Seabrook, and the examples he used to make his point (over and over again). Here's the idea, which is pretty much an example of Hegel's dialectic: you have High Brow Culture (the "thesis"), and you have Low Brow Culture (the "antithesis"); they evolve, coexist and eventually, they clash; and now, the new "thesis"--which is the product of the clash--is No Brow Culture. It's anticulture culture. It's George Lucas (when no one understood the meaning of THX 1128). It's Nirvana (when people thought they were just some non-hygenic musicians from Seattle). It's how rebellion (or rebellious ideas) become mainstream. So I guess the next step for Seabrook is to figure out what people will rebel against now...
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