Overview

How the rise of Wall Street in the 1980s lured a generation of young upstarts to New York, unleashing a political and cultural transformation whose national repercussions are still felt today. Yuppies may have been a classic 1980s stereotype, but they were also a very real demographic: a wave of hundreds of thousands of highly educated young professionals that washed over New York during that decade. As Wall Street moved to the center of American life, it drew a generation of young people into its vortex. For the first time, banks recruited roughly one-third of graduating classes from top universities. America’s economy had a new main character. Young bankers extracted profits from waning industries, shattering the foundations on which stable middle-class employment had long rested. Yuppie lawyers devised deals and tax strategies that eroded workers’ power and wages. As consumers, yuppies created new cultures of fitness and of excess, popularizing marathon running and fine dining as status markers. As city-dwellers, they were pioneers of gentrification. And as voters and political donors, yuppies engineered a takeover of local and national government, using their wealth to back candidates who would remake the country in their image. Yuppies reminds us that we still live in the shadow of the greed-is-good 1980s: Our cities are playgrounds for the wealthy, and Wall Street and Washington remain locked in a tight embrace. Dylan Gottlieb’s exquisite recounting leaves no doubt that the yuppie takeover of New York began a more unequal chapter in American life—one we continue writing today.

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Reviews

A fascinating read for anyone interested in yuppie culture and how the demographic affected New York City, in particular, and the country as a whole. -- Amanda Ray * Library Journal * Readers who wish to immerse themselves in sights and sounds of 1980s New York…will find in Gottlieb a knowledgeable and witty tour guide. -- Joel Harold Tannenbaum * Orange Blossom Ordinary * A most excellent romp through recent New York history. Dylan Gottlieb's fascinating Yuppies brings to life for a new generation of readers what constituted a proud yuppie existence like my own: an Upper West Side apartment, a Wall Street investment banking job, finishing the New York Marathon, fanatically shopping at Dean & DeLuca. -- William D. Cohan, author of <i>House of Cards</i> and <i>Power Failure</i> Dylan Gottlieb has given us a brilliant account of the transformation of New York City in the late years of the twentieth century. Original, compelling, and written with wry humor, Yuppies offers a vision of what was gained as well as what was lost in New York through the rise of finance. -- Kim Phillips-Fein, author of <i>Fear City</i> Gottlieb vividly demonstrates how the yuppie was not some passing 1980s trend but a historical phenomenon that radically reshaped our economic, cultural, and political landscapes. If you want to know how we ended up where we are today, read this fascinating, revelatory book. -- Paulina Bren, author of <i>The Barbizon and She-Wolves: The Untold History of Women on Wall Street</i> At last, the social history of financialization has been written. No one seriously studying this period of US history will be able to ignore Yuppies, which will also appeal to general readers. -- Jonathan Levy, author of <i>Ages of American Capitalism: A History of the United States</i>

A most excellent romp through recent New York history. Dylan Gottlieb's fascinating Yuppies brings to life for a new generation of readers what constituted a proud yuppie existence like my own: an Upper West Side apartment, a Wall Street investment banking job, finishing the New York Marathon, fanatically shopping at Dean & DeLuca.--William D. Cohan, author of House of Cards and Power Failure At last, the social history of financialization has been written. No one seriously studying this period of US history will be able to ignore Yuppies, which will also appeal to general readers.--Jonathan Levy, author of Ages of American Capitalism: A History of the United States

At last, the social history of financialization has been written. No one seriously studying this period of US history will be able to ignore Yuppies, which will also appeal to general readers.--Jonathan Levy, author of Ages of American Capitalism: A History of the United States

Author Information

Dylan Gottlieb is Assistant Professor of History at Bentley University. A cohost of Who Makes Cents: A History of Capitalism Podcast, he has written for the Washington Post, Gotham, the Journal of American History, and Public Seminar.

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