From Publishers Weekly
For readers who are feeling glum about America and its place in the world, or those who despairingly look at our culture's cookie cutter, strip mall consumerism and flash-bang glitter, Brooks (Bobos in Paradise) offers a balm with his latest pseudo-sociological treatise. More a way to look at what he sees as America's problems (e.g., our thirst for enormous gas guzzlers and super-sized soft drinks) with optimism than a series of suggestions of how to fix them, this book by the New York Times op-ed columnist tells readers it's okay to consume, consume, consume-so long as they look toward the future while doing so. At times playful and sarcastic (though less funny than intended), the book jumps from statistical analysis to cultural observation to defense of Bush's foreign policy, all without much of a mooring in essential context or factual citation. This is deceptive optimism; one long essay insisting our society's problems are not so big, provided we talk about them in the right way. While engagingly written and insightful at points, Brooks's affirmation is unlikely to resound with anyone outside the conservative choir, and even less likely to spark change-or even a desire for change. Still, it's nice to feel loved-if not by the rest of the world, than at least by this author. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Four years ago, David Brooks published Bobos in Paradise, a captivating book about the convergence of bohemian and bourgeois cultures. The trend had been noted before. Indeed, an entire magazine, the Baffler, had been founded largely to decry it. But where the leftist Baffler savaged the hypocrisy of Baby Boomer capitalists who styled themselves counterculture rebels, Brooks, a conservative, invented an affectionate nickname for these bourgeois bohemians ("bobos"); lampooned them wittily but gently; and pronounced them harmless and in some ways actually beneficial to the common weal. This upbeat diagnosis made bobos feel better about themselves, and Brooks quickly became the right's ambassador to the liberal establishment. This past September, the New York Times formalized that role by giving him an op-ed column. Brooks's new book, On Paradise Drive, has a more ambitious scope than Bobos in Paradise. This time, Brooks is examining all of America -- all of its middle class, anyway -- and he's reaching for a larger theme that will explain how its various subcultures relate to one another. Unfortunately, he never finds one. That Brooks has not lost his penchant for bemused social taxonomy is amply demonstrated in the book's first chapter, which takes us on an imaginary drive that begins in a prototypical urban core. We travel from the downtown "urban hipster zone," characterized by "a stimulating mixture of low sexuality and high social concern," to the "crunchy" suburbs, where "all the sports teams are really bad, except those involving Frisbees." Then it's on to the pricier inner-ring suburbs, once inhabited by the Republican WASP elite but now taken over by the meritocratic elite, who babble at dinner parties about "the merits and demerits of Corian countertops." Farther on, we find the strip-mall-laden immigrant enclaves and, past these, the postwar suburbs that sometimes seem "shaped more by golf than by war or literature or philosophy." Finally, we reach our terminus at the "new exurbs" inhabited by Patio Man and Realtor Mom, who live in "a 3,200 square-foot middle-class home built to look like a 7,000 square-foot starter palace for the nouveaux riche." It's a beguiling trip, but where are we going? In the next chapter, Brooks introduces the promising theme that class and cultural warfare never reach a boiling point because America's multiple tribes are only dimly aware of one another's existence. "There is no one single elite in America," Brooks explains. "Hence, there is no definable establishment to be oppressed by and rebel against. Everybody can be an aristocrat within his own Olympus." Whereas the Greeks advised, "Know thyself," the inhabitants of America's "self-reinforcing clique communities . . . live by the maxim 'Overrate thyself.' " This is an amusing and intellectually provocative point, and I briefly looked forward to Brooks taking the rest of the book to elaborate on it. But he doesn't develop the theme, choosing instead to move on to the more banal point that Americans are full of restless energy and spiritual striving, sometimes expressed through the "mystical transubstantiation" of consumerism, which isn't so much about having what you can afford now as it is about getting rich by working hard so you can have something more luxurious in the future. "We are motivated by the Paradise Spell," Brooks concludes, "by the feeling that there is some glorious destiny just ahead." This sentiment could animate a perfectly acceptable high school class valedictorian speech or, with a few more laughs thrown in, a passable Lake Wobegon monologue by Garrison Keillor. But though he dresses it up with learned citations from many non-obvious sources -- the German theologian Jurgen Moltmann, the radical socialist Leon Samson, etc., etc. -- Brooks simply can't make Jay Gatsby's infatuation with the green light at the end of the pier feel like a fresh new expression of the American character.Brooks's earlier book and the insightful social and political commentary in many of his magazine essays have led us to expect he would have something more original to say. (In the Times column he is still finding his voice, but it certainly isn't this bland.) I must also confess creeping impatience with his heavy reliance on satirical composites to make serious sociological points. Even Tom Wolfe, who is better at this than anyone else alive, leavens his hyperbolic generalizations with narratives about real people -- in his nonfiction, anyway. In the introduction, Brooks says it is necessary to "speak in parables, composites, and archetypes, for the personality of a people, as much as the personality of an individual, is a mysterious, changing thing." But a little of this goes a long way. When, halfway through the book, Brooks introduces a succession of composite-driven chapters with the aside "Sometimes a little satire is in order," it sounds like an apology. And while we're on the subject of apologies, what's with Brooks's nervous little joke in the acknowledgments that his wife Jane's "design for our new house made this book necessary"? Is he saying that he's feeling a little overextended and underinspired these days? If so, give him points for honesty. In my characteristically American way, I see a worthwhile book coming out of David Brooks sometime in the future. But On Paradise Drive is a disappointment. Reviewed by Timothy Noah Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.


From Bookmarks Magazine
Woe the conservative who finds favor with the “liberal” press. After his breakthrough turn in Bobos in Paradise, Brooks, a New York Times op-ed columnist, was the rare elephant in the living room that the Blue states could cuddle up to. While none of the criticism seems overtly motivated by politics, there is a tone of disappointment in most of the reviews. Brooks still has a way with his well-honed cultural skewer, although a tendency towards generalizations bothers many critics. The loudest grumbles are provoked by Brooks’s incessant need to go for the easy joke, many of which just aren’t funny. More importantly, critics raise questions about the relevance of his argument. It seems, for the moment, the zeitgeist has Mr. Brooks in its rear-view mirror.Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.


From Booklist
Brooks, whose Bobos in Paradise (2001) focused on America's upper class, continues his offbeat examination of modern culture by examining the middle class. Life in the middle isn't what it used to be, Brooks reports. Whereas the word suburb once conjured up images of bland homogeneity, it now means "lesbian dentists, Iranian McMansions, Korean megachurches, nuclear-free-zone subdevelopments, Orthodox shtetls with Hasidic families walking past strip malls on their way to Saturday-morning shul." Where we live, Brooks says, is no longer our destination; it's a "dot on the flowing plane of multidirectional movement." Today's middle class is constantly in motion, always looking forward, planning its future. As a satiric social commentator, Brooks is always looking for the humorous anomaly--there are more than 600 certified pet chiropractors in the U.S.--but along with exposing cultural absurdities, he offers acute observations on middle-class life, and he frequently takes us in previously unexplored philosophical directions. One way or the other, this book will give readers plenty of new things to think about. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
The author of the acclaimed bestseller Bobos in Paradise, which hilariously described the upscale American culture, takes a witty look at how being American shapes us, and how America's suburban civilization will shape the world's future. Take a look at Americans in their natural habitat. You see suburban guys at Home Depot doing that special manly, waddling walk that American men do in the presence of large amounts of lumber; super-efficient ubermoms who chair school auctions, organize the PTA, and weigh less than their children; workaholic corporate types boarding airplanes while talking on their cell phones in a sort of panic because they know that when the door closes they have to turn their precious phone off and it will be like somebody stepped on their trachea. Looking at all this, you might come to the conclusion that we Americans are not the most profound people on earth. Indeed, there are millions around the world who regard us as the great bimbos of the globe: hardworking and fun, but also materialistic and spiritually shallow. They've got a point. As you drive through the sprawling suburbs or eat in the suburban chain restaurants (which if they merged would be called Chili's Olive Garden Hard Rock Outback Cantina), questions do occur. Are we really as shallow as we look? Is there anything that unites us across the divides of politics, race, class, and geography? What does it mean to be American? Well, mentality matters, and sometimes mentality is all that matters. As diverse as we are, as complacent as we sometimes seem, Americans are united by a common mentality, which we have inherited from our ancestors and pass on, sometimes unreflectingly, to our kids. We are united by future-mindedness. We see the present from the vantage point of the future. We are tantalized, at every second of every day, by the awareness of grand possibilities ahead of us, by the bounty we can realize just over the next ridge. This mentality leads us to work feverishly hard, move more than any other people on earth, switch jobs, switch religions. It makes us anxious and optimistic, manic and discombobulating. Even in the superficiality of modern suburban life, there is some deeper impulse still throbbing in the heart of average Americans. That impulse is the subject of this book.


Download Description
"The author of the acclaimed bestseller Bobos in Paradise, which hilariously described the upscale American culture, takes a witty look at how being American shapes us, and how America's suburban civilization will shape the world's future. Take a look at Americans in their natural habitat. You see suburban guys at Home Depot doing that special manly, waddling walk that American men do in the presence of large amounts of lumber; super-efficient ubermoms who chair school auctions, organize the PTA, and weigh less than their children; workaholic corporate types boarding airplanes while talking on their cell phones in a sort of panic because they know that when the door closes they have to turn their precious phone off and it will be like somebody stepped on their trachea. Looking at all this, you might come to the conclusion that we Americans are not the most profound people on earth. Indeed, there are millions around the world who regard us as the great bimbos of the globe: hardworking and fun, but also materialistic and spiritually shallow. They've got a point. As you drive through the sprawling suburbs or eat in the suburban chain restaurants (which if they merged would be called Chili's Olive Garden Hard Rock Outback Cantina), questions do occur. Are we really as shallow as we look? Is there anything that unites us across the divides of politics, race, class, and geography? What does it mean to be American?

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
"Let's take a drive," exhorts comic sociologist-cum-journalist David Brooks in this delightful study of middle-class suburbia -- a sprawling, borderless frontier as far removed from the soulless literary terrain of John Cheever as the land of Oz. So we pile into the minivan (what else?) and cruise along; and as we move across the great expanse from hip semi-urban neighborhoods to exurbs and beyond -- past diverse cultural landscapes peppered with "lesbian dentists, Iranian McMansions, Korean megachurches," and more -- it soon becomes clear that we have left all those Stepford Wife stereotypes of conformity far behind. Once caught in a gravitational pull toward major cities, today's suburbs are free-floating decentralized zones, each with its own distinct identity.

Brooks makes a waggish tour guide. The same wit and humor that enlivened Bobos in Paradise (his delectable skewering of the "information age elite") is abundantly evident here. But beneath his sly lampooning of Trader Joe's, Banana Republic, über-moms, SUVs, and National Public Radio lurks serious sociological scholarship. We discover some startling truths about the great suburban dispersal and how middle-class America chooses to live at the start of the 21st century. Examining our relentless drive toward achievement, our materialism, and our attitudes toward work and family, Brooks uncovers what really lies at the heart of our restless national character: not -- as our detractors claim -- crass materialism or cosmic attention deficit disorder but rather our idealistic belief in the existence of a better future. Anne Markowski

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"As diverse as we are, as complacent as we sometimes seem, Americans are united by a common mentality, which we have inherited from our ancestors and pass on, sometimes unreflectingly, to our kids." "We are united by future-mindedness. We see the present from the vantage point of the future. We are tantalized, at every second of the day, by the awareness of grand possibilities ahead of us, by the bounty we can realize just over the next ridge." "This mentality leads us to work feverishly hard, move more than any other people on earth, switch jobs, switch religions. It made us anxious and optimistic, manic and discombobulating." Even in the superficiality of modern suburban life, there is some deeper impulse still throbbing in the heart of average Americans. That impulse is the subject of this book.

FROM THE CRITICS

Joyce Maynard - The New York Times

In the same way that Malcolm Gladwell, in The Tipping Point, pulled off the virtuoso accomplishment of making whole cloth from threads as diverse as the resurgence in popularity of Hush Puppies shoes and the breakthrough idea responsible for the success of "Sesame Street," Mr. Brooks has pulled together a vast range of source material -- from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Power Point presentations to Cigar Aficionado magazine -- to create a picture of the forces that have shaped our national character.

Publishers Weekly

For readers who are feeling glum about America and its place in the world, or those who despairingly look at our culture's cookie cutter, strip mall consumerism and flash-bang glitter, Brooks (Bobos in Paradise) offers a balm with his latest pseudo-sociological treatise. More a way to look at what he sees as America's problems (e.g., our thirst for enormous gas guzzlers and super-sized soft drinks) with optimism than a series of suggestions of how to fix them, this book by the New York Times op-ed columnist tells readers it's okay to consume, consume, consume-so long as they look toward the future while doing so. At times playful and sarcastic (though less funny than intended), the book jumps from statistical analysis to cultural observation to defense of Bush's foreign policy, all without much of a mooring in essential context or factual citation. This is deceptive optimism; one long essay insisting our society's problems are not so big, provided we talk about them in the right way. While engagingly written and insightful at points, Brooks's affirmation is unlikely to resound with anyone outside the conservative choir, and even less likely to spark change-or even a desire for change. Still, it's nice to feel loved-if not by the rest of the world, than at least by this author. Agents, Glen Hartley and Lynn Chu. (June) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Brooks, a NY Times op-ed columnist, the author of Bobos in Paradise, and a self-described comic sociologist, here accomplishes an admirable feat: he thoughtfully constructs a critique of American middle-class suburban culture while entertaining the reader with clever, laugh-out-loud observations (it's Jerry Seinfeld meets Modern American Sociology 101). Like Michael J. Weiss's The Clustered World and Barry Schwartz's The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, Brooks addresses consumerism in America. But according to him, it is the "Paradise Spell," the utopian American philosophy, that drives us to work harder, change addresses more often, and acquire more possessions than citizens of any other nation. Brooks puts middle-class America on the analyst's couch and concludes that we are not as shallow as we seem; instead, we are motivated by a tenacious optimism, a belief in the golden future just around the bend. For better or worse, Americans are dreamers, filled with hope, forever pursuing fantasies, and historically and uniquely obsessed with a complicated future. This is a persuasive and inspiring thesis, even if it's not completely convincing. Recommended for public and academic libraries of all kinds.-Lori Carabello, Ephrata P.L., PA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews