The stereotypical American in the 1980s was the "yuppie," a nickname for the "young urban professional," a person between twenty-five and thirty-nine years old whose job in management or a profession gave them an income of more than $40,000 a year. The term yuppie described more than an age and an income level; it described a lifestyle as well. Yuppies spent money freely. They sought out material goods as a way of demonstrating to their world that they had made it. Yuppies drove BMW cars or the newly popular sport utility vehicles (SUVs). They wore Ralph Lauren clothes and Rolex watches, and they drank Perrier water. If they lived in the city and thought that laws did not apply to them, they may have snorted cocaine, the drug of choice among the well-to-do.

Yuppies were the product of an expanding economy, and of a generation...