Class

I really enjoyed reading this book. It's funny how relevant it is today considering it was written in the 80's. Class is far more than the money you have and this book goes into great detail about the differences between the classes, right down to our driveways. Reading this book has really opened my eyes up to the small ways we show our class (I come from a low-prole background). I socialise with people from prole, middle class and upper middle class backgrounds and almost everything written in this book matches up with what I've seen. Highly recommend this book if you want in depth information on the differences within our modern class systems. Would love to see a revised version featuring social media etc.

How we are linked to our upbringing; and that we all have good and bad

Fussell was a curmudgeon, but a brilliant one.

I was introduced to CLASS in the 1980s by a college professor--he used it as the ONLY textbook in a course on social class in modern American society. Although the book is now somewhat dated, it remains pertinent to the study of social class in the USA as a keenly accurate depiction of American society at the time it was written.

Classic. Read this if you want to understand the class structure in America. Anything by Paul Fussel is a good read.

This book is in very rough condition. I was a little shocked at how bad it was. All pages are present.

A classic!

pretentious

Interesting and well written if perhaps a little dated.

Paul Fussell decided to unearth some of the arcana of class behaviour in the US and the result is - depending on your perspective - witty, scathing, interesting, or offensive. First building up a framework, and explaining the 'class ladder', the majority of the book then focuses on how to distinguish members of a particular class. The classes covered - from top out of sight, over upper, upper middle, middle, prole (from high to low variety), destitute and lower out of sight - should in essence present the whole spectrum but if truth be told, more than 90% of the content focuses on the upper middle, middle and prole classes. Depending on how you look at it, the author could be perceived as arrogant, and he is certainly scathing when it comes to describing the habits of both the middle class and proles. One also certainly gets the impression that Fussell threads much more selectively than Veblen - the upper classes coming off very lightly, for instance (a hint as to where the author would wish to be?). However, comparing the book to something like Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class (Dover Thrift) , one cannot say it is nearly of the same calibre, and Fussell focuses much more on description than on explanation (and the explanation offered is often based on Veblen's work). While not being up to scratch, when compared to 'the last man, who knew everything', one has to admit that the book is also easier to read. Both will provide entertainment, Fussell's simply being more up to date in terms of language and simplicity of expression. The book was originally published in the early 80s and is consequently a bit dated in some aspects. However many of the points mentioned are still more or less accurate, with some exceptions, like the selection of cars or dogs (both of them being less than well informed and wrong even when the book was written). In the end you will probably not learn much new (unlike with Veblen) but the book may well provide a couple of hours of entertainment, that is if you can laugh at yourself (otherwise the book is much more likely to upset than entertain and you would do better to avoid it).