Tom McGrath's "Triumph of the Yuppies"

Tom McGrath was the editor-in-chief of Philadelphia magazine, as well as chief content officer of Metro Corp., the parent company of Philadelphia and Boston between 2010 and 2020. Under his leadership, the magazines won more than fifty awards for editorial excellence. In 2022, he was named Writer of the Year at the National City and Regional Magazine Awards. He’s written two previous books: MTV: The Making of a Revolution, and, with John Basedow, Fitness Made Simple.

McGrath applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, Triumph of the Yuppies: America, the Eighties, and the Creation of an Unequal Nation, and reported the following:

Page 99 of Triumph of the Yuppies introduces us to the General Electric corporation as Jack Welch was taking over as CEO in 1981. As the page explains, for a century GE had been one of America’s most successful and admired companies, providing both innovation and hundreds of thousands of jobs in cities and towns across the country.

GE adhered to certain standards when it came to how it operated. Reg Jones, Welch’s predecessor as CEO, cited loyalty, along with moral integrity and innovation, as key elements of the “GE spirit.”

That spirit was alive and well in Schenectady, NY, GE’s original headquarters, which grew along with the company during much of the 20th Century. As page 99 tells us, “The residents of Schenectady and the surrounding area got not only the satisfaction of improving the world, but also solid, middle-class jobs. People worked at GE for their entire lives—and saw generations of family members do so as well.”

Page 99 is a great representation of what Triumph of the Yuppies is about, since it sketches out the culture of corporate America – and the broader culture of America – before the 1980s.

The book is a deep dive into how that culture changed during the ’80s, with Yuppies — aka, young urban professionals, an elite, well-educated subset of the Baby Boom generation — leading the charge.

Thanks to a new set of values and a change in the cultural winds, the focus in the early 1980s shifted to a narrowly defined version of “success.” For companies like GE, that meant rewarding stockholders with the biggest profits possible, even if it involved shipping jobs overseas, exploiting workers, or decimating communities. (GE would do all of those under Welch.) For individuals, the “success” ethic meant an intense focus on careers, money, materialism and status — whether it was owning the fanciest car imaginable, wearing a designer suit, or eating at only the best restaurants.

Triumph of the Yuppies is a cultural history that touches on a broad swath of what was happening in America during a pivotal decade, including changes in politics, on Wall Street, in corporate America, in cities, and in lifestyles. It includes fun details from the '80s (from Jane Fonda and the Sharper Image to Madonna and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous) while detailing how a divide developed in the country along educational and economic fault lines — a divide we feel more than ever four decades later.

Ultimately, the book is the origin story of the unequal, unsettled America we live in today.

Visit Tom McGrath's website.

--Marshal Zeringue