The Status Revolution: The Improbable Story of How the Lowbrow Became the Highbrow

“Everywhere you look, Americans are signaling status in new ways,” according to this witty and incisive survey of how the loss of “easily deciphered status markers” has upended American society and culture. Noting that it’s now more prestigious to own a rescue dog than a pure breed, journalist Thompson (Better Off Without ’Em) declares the theories of Thorstein Veblen, Vance Packard, and others who linked status to leisure and conspicuous consumption as out-of-date. Thompson visits an Indigenous artist in British Columbia as he builds a full-size replica of a 19th-century totem pole taken from his people in the 1950s (“For scarcity, prestige, and luxury, a few hundred board feet of centuries-old Canadian red cedar is on par with diamonds and moon rocks”) and talks with the cofounder of the Patriotic Millionaires, “a group of wealthy Americans who lobby for higher taxes on the rich, meaning higher taxes on themselves.” Thompson casts a critical eye on “industrial-strength philanthropy” and other practices of the ultra-rich, but spotlights plenty of worthy do-gooders and enlivens his cultural and historical analysis with bon mots. It’s an entertaining and intelligent eye-opener. (Jan.)