SOURCE: Stark, Andrew. “Ungifted and Unbeautiful.” Times Literary Supplement (25 October 2002): 10.

In the following review, Stark explores the concept of snobbery as presented in Snobbery, concluding that the “book is too hard on snobbery.”

“What is wrong with snobbery?” the political theorist Judith Shklar once asked; and in Joseph Epstein's Snobbery: The American Version, an answer emerges. The snob violates the Golden Rule. He seeks from his social superiors treatment that he refuses to accord his social inferiors. Truckling for warm “acceptance from those above him”, Epstein writes, the snob cuttingly “reject[s] those below”.

With the wit and acuity of Thackeray's Book of Snobs, Epstein adduces a gallery of snobbish types, some drawn from history or literature and others from his own experience. Attending a dinner in honour of the famous newscaster Walter Cronkite, Epstein watches as two journalists shake hands warmly while looking over each other's “shoulder...