Triumph of the Yuppies
America, the Eighties, and the Creation of an Unequal Nation
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4.2 • 6 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2024
The “entertaining and insightful” first history of the Yuppie phenomenon, chronicling the roots, rise, triumph and (seeming) fall of the young urban professionals who radically altered American life between 1980 and 1987 (New York Times bestselling author Ben Mezrich).
By the time their obituary was being written in the late 1980s, Yuppies—the elite, uber‑educated faction of the Baby Boom generation—had become a cultural punchline. But amidst the Yuppies' preoccupation with money, work, and the latest status symbols, something serious was happening, too, something that continues to have profound ramifications on American culture four decades later.
Brimming with lively and nostalgic details (think Jane Fonda, The Sharper Image, and over-the-top fashion), Triumph of the Yuppies charts Boomers' transformation from hippy idealists in the late 1960s to careerists in the early 1980s, and details how marketers, the media, and politicians pivoted to appeal to this influential new group. Yuppie values had an undeniable impact on the worlds of fashion, food, and fitness, as well as affecting the broader culture—from gentrification and an obsession with career success to an indulgent materialism. Most significantly, the me‑first mindset typical of Yuppieness helped create the largest income inequality in a century.
Tom McGrath’s masterful cultural history reveals how Yuppies reshaped American society. It is a portrait of America just as it was beginning to come apart—and the origin story of the fractured country we live in today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Vaulting ambition, passionate consumerism, and a business culture that threw workers under the bus are among the achievements of the yuppie generation, according to this penetrating study. Journalist McGrath (MTV) charts the trajectory of the "young urban professional" cohort who protested in the 1960s, "found themselves" in the '70s, and went to Wall Street in the '80s. Their impact, he notes, was far-reaching: they gentrified America's cities with chic restaurants and shops, driving up rents; fetishized luxury brands and artisanal foods like Cuisinart, BMW, and Perrier; forged a self-congratulatory concept of success by flaunting their advanced degrees and endless work hours; and embraced Ronald Reagan's vision of unfettered corporate capitalism. McGrath hangs his analysis around portraits of colorful personalities like Jerry Rubin, a former lefty radical who started a company that hosted business-networking parties, and barbed accounts of the yuppies' oft-satirized quirks, from their dreary jargon to their reflexive crassness ("I've got a fast-track career.... And now I need a faster-track relationship," he quotes one saying as he dumped his wife for a coworker). He also reckons the cost of the yuppie-administered 1980s economy with haunting profiles of rust belt towns like Youngstown, Ohio, that lost millions of manufacturing jobs. It's a beguiling look at an era that inaugurated an ever-widening rift between a self-satisfied elite and a resentful working class.
