Boob Jubilee: The Mad Cultural Politics of the New Economy: Salvos from the Baffler
Author: Thomas Frank, Tom Frank, David Mulcahey, Dave Mulcahey, Studs Terkel
List Price: $15.95
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ISBN: 0393324303
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company (August, 2003)
Sales Rank: 247,874
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 4 out of 5
A really mixed bag
This book appears to be a collection of someone's (or some committee's) favorite articles from The Baffler, a literary magazine whose main job seems to be poking jabs at our culture. The title certainly doesn't help in determining that as "Boob" itself is such a multi-use word nowadays. Furthermore, many Americans west of the Mississippi have never heard of the New Economy and could care less about about literary criticism.I think the audience for this book is really limited and not consistent with the title or the book cover. However, once you get past the first couple of reallllly dry essays, there are some that are worthy of more attention.
Rating: 5 out of 5
fun, funny, informative
The first two chapters might turn you off, I came close to stopping my reading of the book, but was urged on by friends and it payed off. The first two chapters are rather dense and not so witty, but soon after that this book really takes off. I am not totally 100% on the unifying theme of these essays, they claim to be poking a hole in the idea of the New Economy, but they all add up to more of a poking holes in various aspects of society -- of the "hip" society.The essays tend to have a sense of humor about them as they go about their disections of culture. A few take themselves too seriously, one about the Mississippi river is just bizarre. I don't know that there is anything particularly groundbreaking here, much of the exposed secrets of the New Economy can be summarized "rich man bad, poor man good." You'd think they could be a little more insightful than that. I am not fully with the politics of this book, but I give it its five stars for being quite readable and, in the end, making us think.
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