W. David Marx is a longtime writer on culture based in Tokyo and the author of Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Lapham s Quarterly, Popeye, The New Republic, and Vox.

INCREASINGLY RELEVANT SUBJECT: Status is a fundamental part of human life, and yet our collective knowledge about the mysteries of cultural change has never been laid out in a single book. In the age of social media influencers especially, status is an omnipresent topic. Status & Culture breaks down how it works, why things are cool, and how that influences society.NEW TAKE: This is the first book on status to link individual behavior to the formation of culture as a whole. It reveals the hidden rules behind how we organize ourselves in hierarchies, while helping us understand our own behavior.PREVIOUS BOOK: Marx's first book, Ametora, is a cult classic in the fashion world, and received extensive press coverage.INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH: Status & Culture synthesizes various fields, from psychology to semiotics to economics, but instead of simply reviewing or regurgitating the previous literature, it will take the wisdom of the great works and present it as practical, common sense, making the book promotable in many different markets.

"Subtly altered how I see the world."  Michelle Goldberg, New York Times

[Status and Culture] consistently posits theories I'd never previously considered that instantly feel obvious. Chuck Klosterman, author of The Nineties

Why are you the way that you are? Status and Culture explains nearly everything about the things you choose to be and how the society we live in takes shape in the process. B.J. Novak, writer and actor

Solving the long-standing mysteries of culture from the origin of our tastes and identities, to the perpetual cycles of fashions and fads through a careful exploration of the fundamental human desire for status

All humans share a need to secure their social standing, and this universal motivation structures our behavior, forms our tastes, determines how we live, and ultimately shapes who we are. We can use status, then, to explain why some things become cool, how stylistic innovations arise, and why there are constant changes in clothing, music, food, sports, slang, travel, hairstyles, and even dog breeds.

In Status and Culture, W. David Marx weaves together the wisdom from history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, philosophy, linguistics, semiotics, cultural theory, literary theory, art history, media studies, and neuroscience to demonstrate exactly how individual status seeking creates our cultural ecosystem. Marx examines three fundamental questions: Why do individuals cluster around arbitrary behaviors and take deep meaning from them? How do distinct styles, conventions, and sensibilities emerge? Why do we change behaviors over time and why do some behaviors stick around? The answers then provide new perspectives for understanding the seeming weightlessness of internet culture.      

Status and Culture is a book that will appeal to business people, students, creators, and anyone who has ever wondered why things become popular, why their own preferences change over time, and how identity plays out in contemporary society. Readers of this book will walk away with deep and lasting knowledge of the often secret rules of how culture really works.