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REVIEW: ‘Yuppies: The Bankers, Lawyers, Joggers, and Gourmands Who Conquered New York’ by Dylan Gottlieb
As a college freshman in the fall of 1994, I read Alex Kotlowitz’s There Are No Children Here in an introductory sociology course. For a week, I was over the moon. Here was a gripping story about good kids surviving a fearsome public-housing complex—a story that braided heartbreaking interviews, contemporary news, historical events, and policy discussions.
My enthusiasm, however, faded as I read further and attended more classes. This was actually a story, the book and my professor believed, about racism, classism, and conservative cruelty. I objected (silently, of course) to the progressive interpretation: You could just as easily see it as a warning about poor personal choices, government dependency, arrogant technocracy, and failed bureaucratic systems. But more frustrating was the seeming requirement of seeing the story through any political lens. Chapter after chapter, class after class, an endlessly interesting tale was being spoiled by forcing politics down its throat.
I was reminded of this while reading Dylan Gottlieb’s Yuppies: The Bankers, Lawyers, Joggers, and Gourmands Who Conquered New York. At its best, the book offers a fascinating, convincing explanation of how yuppyism came about, revealed itself in the workplace and society, and changed the Big Apple and the broader culture. Other times, it seemed like a great story was being shaped to accommodate the modern progressive’s fixation on capitalism, power, and identity.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Washington Free Beacon
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Andy Smarick is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.