`Snobbery: The American Version,' by Joseph Epstein; Houghton.(South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

Joseph Epstein's publisher claims that this is the first book on the subject since William Makepeace Thackeray's "The Book of Snobs," a period of well more than a century. Can this be true? Can it be that wags the likes of H.L. Mencken, Edith Wharton, Evelyn Waugh, Marcel Proust, Henry James, Tom Wolfe have resisted so ubiquitous and prominent and delicious a human failing?

Perhaps none of these other social critics/novelists thought the subject contained a book's worth of interest. Indeed, there are moments in "Snobbery" when you might doubt whether Epstein can get a whole book out of it; his central, admirably counterintuitive thesis _ snobbery comes into full flower only in a democracy _ draws thin soon after its introduction and a few tart illustrations.

It would, of course, be snobbish in the book-reviewing sense to point out that Epstein is evidently more interested in entertaining than …