VEBLEN, Thorstein.

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The Theory of the Leisure Class. First edition of the Norwegian-American professor's first published book. Veblen offers an incisive study of the customs, values, and practices of the emergent business class in Gilded Age America.The book was intended as a serious economic analysis of contemporary America but was given a complimentary review by William Dean Howells as a social satire, turning it into a bestseller and Veblen's most successful work. "Into it he poured all the acidulous ideas and fantastic terminology that had been simmering in his mind for years" (DAB). For Royall Brandis, the work offers "a wicked dissection of this culture and its cherished institutions, handled so well as to appear to be done in a passionless, scientific manner while ranking Veblen perhaps alongside Jonathan Swift in the pantheon of satirists" (ODNB).The treatise coined the terms "conspicuous consumption" and "conspicuous waste" as methods of establishing status and prestige. The terms have become a part of everyday language, and modern economists identify "Veblen goods" as those whose desirability decreases with their price and availability.

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