As a newly successful young professional, I thrilled in this book's ride up and down our American class ladder. Outrageously funny, you'll need a thick skin not to take umbrage at times. I am still ashamed to learn that expensive technical wrist-watches imply horrible middle class status. Probably most Americans find offensive this book's teaching that one's class is inherited at birth, with little or no recourse to change it (an exception being marriage up or down). In the final chapter of the book, "The X Way Out", Fussell argues there is a class of Americans who have risen above class. However, I think he was self-indulgently describing middle-class, well-educated people like himself, who have a strong sense of irony and a sociologists intellectual rationalization of the class system. Certainly the members of his "X" group did not graduate from the ivy leagues, or drop-out of the urban high-schools. Though written in the early 1980's, Fussell's observations are almost all still pertinent in 1999. However, his characterization of corporations as evil overlords seems quaint and archaic in this era of 5% unemployment. In summary, if you ever wondered about an American class system, this book is for you.