The Theory of the Leisure Class

ebook Dover Thrift Editions

By Thorstein Veblen

cover image of The Theory of the Leisure Class

Sign up to save your library

With an OverDrive account, you can save your favorite libraries for at-a-glance information about availability. Find out more about OverDrive accounts.

   Not today
Libby_app_icon.svg

Find this title in Libby, the library reading app by OverDrive.

app-store-button-en.svg play-store-badge-en.svg
LibbyDevices.png

Search for a digital library with this title

Title found at these libraries:

Loading...

"The most impressive satirist of his day." — Time Magazine

With devastating satiric wit, this book examines the hollowness and falsity suggested by the term "conspicuous consumption" (coined by Veblen) and exposes the emptiness of many cherished standards of taste, education, dress, and culture. Since its original publication in 1899, the work has become a classic of social and economic thought and policy and exerted an influence widely felt beyond the sphere of economics.
For Veblen, the shallowness and superficiality of society resulted from the tendency to believe that true accomplishment lay in arriving at a condition of ostentatious wealth and status. In developing this thesis, he traces the origins and development of ownership and property, offering extraordinary insights into the phenomenon of consumerism, the evolution of class structure, the rise of leisure time and how modern societal goals are grounded in pecuniary aspirations and achievements.
Students, sociologists, historians, economists — anyone interested in the motives and behavior of human beings within a large-scale social context — will find this time-honored investigation still relevant and readable over a century after its first appearance. It belongs in the library of every thinking person.

The Theory of the Leisure Class