A Field Guide to the Yettie: America's Young, Entrepreneurial Technocrats

by Sam Sifton

Book Overview

Gone is the yuppie, that late eighties stooge. In his place, Sam Sifton introduces a new business-cultural stereotype for the 21st century: the yettie. Yetties are young. They are entrepreneurial.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786886099
• ISBN13: 9780786886098
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Hyperion Books
• Length: 152 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Sam Sifton, whiz kid

Sam Sifton has a book that is as good as any I have read or written. What sets it apart: Sifton doesn't let the glitz of the new market bias him in the Yettie's favor. Instead, he makes his own decisions about them. It's a nice surprise; my friends at "Talk" described him as a bootlicker, and told me not to read "A Field Guide." Boy, were they wrong! Sifton is truly the Tofler of the new millennium, an Ayn Rand for our age. If you enjoyed my "Bright Young Things," you will love what this bright young thing can do.

A revelation

An staggeringly sharp contribution to the 21st century's already bulging cannon of cultural criticism, Sam Sifton's A Field Guide to The Yettie is a must-read for anyone still in the dark about the sub-section of humans we (or should I say Sifton) has so wittingly dubbed "the Yettie." Sprung from the fertile and always avant-garde intellectual womb that is Tina Brown's Talk, "A Field Guide . . ." tracks and describes these brand-new, never-before-considered creatures with laser-like acuity and imagination. Tackling the anthropological/sociological/pop-cultural landscape with Foucauldian grace and a razor-sharp eye that would do Faith Popcorn proud, the book will stand the test of time and stock market. Generations of readers will embrace the Sifton voice. Smoothly street-wise -- like the foie gras in the Hudson Cafeteria's mac-n-cheese and hip enough for any Williamsburg thrift shop, Sifton has produced a post-ironical Ulysses for our time.

MORE THAN YOU EXPECT

Although the book functions perfectly as a primer to the recent and already superfluous silicon culture, it is astonishingly well-written. The archetypical profiles gently skewer the players in the net economy, using equal parts solid reporting and tongue-in-cheek precision that should give anyone reading, whether they are e-inolved or not, the willies of recognition. There are also glossaries of terms and acronyms that are as useful as any "-For-Idiots" book still in print. But this walking tour of the economic trend that changed the world really has more in common with E.B. White's "Here Is New York" than any cat calendar/throwaway humor title, as the author's strong and concise prose and sober sense of humor really shine through.