Rating: 
Summary: I am too good for this book. Sadly, maybe you are not.
Review: This is a pretty good book. Not great. Sure, he pillories the major snobbish fashions of the day. Lots of fun making fun of people who are not as sensible as you or I.He also does a wonderful job of showing how the basis for snobbery has changed, from WASPs and elitism based on real but arbitrary standards like the name of the school you attended, or your connections to established families --- to the modern world, warped by the arbitrary winds of fashionable status, the "hotness" of market driven mania. Still, as a reviewer of great excellence, I must say that his discussion of his attempts to overcome a life of looking down on people and to enter the "snob free zone" limps along -- does he really want us to believe that such a place exists? Who would want to go there? So read this book if you want penetrating insights, sound social commentary, and great amusement. If those are the kinds of things that a person like YOU finds interesting. I might even have given him 5 stars, but of course, I reserve such an award for true merit, of which I am the sole judge.
Rating: 
Summary: Secondhand prose
Review: Why, I found myself asking after wading through the tepid pool of watered-down prose that is Joseph Epstein's "Snobbery," am I so bored with this book? After all, it's not like the subject is uninteresting. Snobbery, class distinctions, social climbing -- whatever you want to call it -- has inspired some exquisite prose by some wonderful writers. Thackeray, Proust, Veblen and Paul Fussell have all had sharp and witty things to say about the topic of trying to impress your betters and look down on your equals. That's when it hit me. The essential vapidity of this book rests in the fact that its author is only regurgitating what others before him have said in a far wittier fashion. In particular, Paul Fussell's book "Class" (which Epstein, mendaciously, doesn't include in his "Bibliographical Note"), a far better guide to this subject, and one from which Epstein has clearly cribbed. If you're interested in the whole realm of social class and social climbing, there are far more intriguing books to choose from. Try Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" if you're ambitious, or Thorstein Veblen's "The Theory of the Leisure Class." Or William Makepeace Thackeray's "The Book of Snobs," or any of his novels, for that matter. Or Paul Fussell's "Class." But Joseph Epstein's book takes an endlessly fascinating subject and make it seem, well, tedious. Try Fussell instead. He may infuriate you, but at least you won't be bored.
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