Class: A Guide Through the American Status System

Front Cover
Simon and Schuster, 1992 - Social Science - 202 pages
3 Reviews
InClassPaul Fussell explodes the sacred American myth of social equality with eagle-eyed irreverence and iconoclastic wit. This bestselling, superbly researched, exquisitely observed guide to the signs, symbols, and customs of the American class system is always outrageously on the mark as Fussell shows us how our status is revealed by everything we do, say, and own. He describes the houses, objects, artifacts, speech, clothing styles, and intellectual proclivities of American classes from the top to the bottom and everybody -- you'll surely recognize yourself -- in between.Classis guaranteed to amuse and infuriate, whether your class is so high it's out of sight (literally) or you are, alas, a sinking victim of prole drift.
 

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Excellent book on American class system. Alas, now somewhat out of date on markers you can be on the lookout for, such as type of furnishings around the home that clue you in on the background and class of the person. Persian rugs are less abundant in the upper classes these days. But the ones that do still have them have precisely the same ones. If you're not an idjut you can certainly extrapolate to current day stuff that wasn't around back when the book was written.Clothing styles changed big time, but update it to modern dress codes based on snaps of random target audience people in the magazines aimed at each market and you'll twig. I discovered lots of hidden truths about my own background and by explaining the layers within each class I discovered how my parents, each from a different class, managed to have a happy healthy relationship that lasted til death did they part.  

Review: Class: A Guide Through the American Status System

User Review  - Ryan - Goodreads

Do not read this book if you are not a snob. You'll be greatly offended. Read full review

Selected pages

Contents

A Touchy Subject
15
An Anatomy of the Classes
24
in Appearance Counts
51
About the House
76
The Life of the Mind
128
vn Speak That I May See Thee
151
vin Climbing and Sinking and Prole Drift
170
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Class: A Guide Through the American Status System
Donald T Regan Chair of English Literature Paul Fussell,Paul Fussell
Snippet view - 1983
Class: A Guide Through the American Status System
Paul Fussell
Snippet view - 1992
Class: A Guide Through the American Status System
Paul Fussell
Snippet view - 1983
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Common terms and phrases

advertising American Anglophilic anxiety archaic archaism audience bottom bowling British called catalogs class signals class system classier clothes collar color Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney cultural designed dinner display dressed drink eating especially euphemism Fiske front glass high prole high-prole higher identify imagine indicate infer institutions jacket Jilly Cooper L. L. Bean largely learning living room look low proles lower mail-order catalogs means middle class Molloy necktie never nice Official Preppy Handbook one's Paul Fussell person popular principle prole cap prole drift reading restaurants shirt social class sometimes sort status sticker Studs Terkel style subtract suggests suit syllables taste tend there's things tion top classes top-out-of-sight University upper upper-class upper-middle upper-middle-class Vance Packard Veblen visible vulgar watch wear wine word worn Wright Mills yacht York

References to this book

About the author (1992)

Paul Fussell, critic, essayist, and cultural commentator, has recently won the H. L. Mencken Award of the Free Press Association. Among his books are The Great War and Modem Memory, which in 1976 won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award; Abroad: British Literary Traveling Between the Wars; Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War; and, most recently, BAD or, The Dumbing of America. His essays have been collected in The Boy Scout Handbook and Other Observations and Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays. He lives in Philadelphia, where he teaches English at the University of Pennsylvania.

Bibliographic information

QR code for Class
TitleClass: A Guide Through the American Status System
A Touchstone book
AuthorPaul Fussell
Editionillustrated, reprint, reissue
PublisherSimon and Schuster, 1992
ISBN0671792253, 9780671792251
Length202 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Social Science / Anthropology / General
Social Science / Demography
Social Science / General
Social Science / Poverty & Homelessness
Social Science / Social Classes & Economic Disparity
  
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