In this book the author, Barbara Ehrenreich, dissects the inner life of the middle class - from the liberal elite of the sixties to the yuppies of the eighties - and reveals the enormous power it wields over our culture and our very self-images as a people. Drawing on a rich variety of sources - from films and child-rearing manuals to the thousands of 'class cues' build into our clothing, furniture, shopping habits and tastes - Ehrenreich exposes the prejudices that shape the way we fail to see each other. With devasting wit and insight, she shatters myth after myth: the myth of middle-class permissiveness (no class is harder on its young); the myth of hard-hat conservatism (the working class is more liberal than the middle class); the myth of yuppie hedonism (no group is more guilt-ridden and puritanical - for them consumption is a new form of work). And she traces these myths to their roots in the ambitious and anxieties that formate the middle class, and that have led to its retreat from a responsibile leadership role.

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