Stories From The Stacks

Young urban professional (yuppies for short) emerged as an archetype close to the heart of transformations taking place in American society during the 1970s and 1980s. These highly-educated individuals were products and architects of a new American economy geared toward financial services and willing cannibalize much of the rest of the economy for short-term profit. While elite universities had once turned out managers for manufacturing firms in midsize cities, by the 1980s their graduates were flocking into banking in major urban centers such as Chicago where the term yuppy originated, but most markedly New York. In his book project, Dr. Dylan Gottlieb, assistant professor at Bentley University and former NEH-Hagley postdoctoral fellow, uncovers a social history of financialization through the lens of yuppies, their economic position, and their cultural proclivities. Among the markers of yuppiedom were an obsession with fitness, an interest in fine dining, and a drive to command cultural symbols as means o