The Theory of the Leisure Class
Thorstein Veblen · 1899
4.9 · 9 ratings
About the book
The book that named conspicuous consumption: wealth is displayed rather than enjoyed, and half of economic life is ceremony. Veblen's deadpan anthropology of the rich reads like satire until you check it against any luxury market since.
Try the short course
Part 1 · Meet the tribe with nothing to do. The first six slides, free.
1 / 6
Veblen's book about money opens nowhere near a bank. Its first pages are about feudal Europe, feudal Japan, Brahmin India and the chieftains of the Icelandic sagas, set down in the flat, patient tone of a man recording the customs of a remote people.
That tone is the joke, and it is also the method. Veblen treats the rich as a tribe: a group with its own taboos, rituals and marks of rank, to be studied from the outside rather than admired or envied from below.
He never winks. He simply keeps describing, calmly and at length, until sooner or later the reader notices that the tribe lives on her own street.
Inside the course
18 parts- The leisure class, introduced as a tribeFree above
- Exploit versus industry: where the distinction began
- Pecuniary emulation: keeping up, defined
- Conspicuous leisure
Questions
Is The Theory of the Leisure Class free to read in Astra Trainer?
Yes. The full book opens free in the app’s reader, in English, French, Portuguese, and Russian.
What is the short course?
18 short parts that walk through the book’s key ideas in slides, each with a quick quiz. The first six slides are free to try on this page.
Where do I get the app?
Astra Trainer is free on the App Store and Google Play. The Theory of the Leisure Class is waiting in the app’s library.
