The future is found on the golf course

"On Paradise Drive" humorously looks at the takeover of suburbia as the new center and future of American life and its levels, from the "crunchy suburbs" just outside the city zones and inner-ring suburbs such as Palo Alto, San Mateo and the rest of our "upscale archipelago," all the way to the "exurbs," marked with glass-cube office parks, big-box malls, and a sprawling stretch of "stuff."

After examining the demographic of suburbia, Brooks attempts to answer some questions: What motivates middle to upper-middle class suburban Americans to be successful and to desire the perfect life as manifested by the ideals of golf? And, more interestingly, are Americans as shallow as they look?

Brooks, who shed light on the life of the bourgeois bohemian in "Bobos in Paradise," entertains particularly in the beginning, adding jokes and coining amusing terms to the lexicon of comic sociology, to which he has contributed immensely already.

In his attempt to answer whether Americans are purely materialistic and simply "bimbos of the world," he loses his tightly controlled, frequently sarcastic discussion of the great American Diaspora of ex-urbanites, immigrants and other escapees into a land of homogeneity and "conservative utopianism."

To understand the collective spirit of the majority of America, Brooks studies how our nation came together, formed by a collective fantasy, and realized, when it looked West, a land that continued on infinitely and promised endless possibilities for success.

"What defines us as a people," Brooks says, "is our pursuit, our movement, our tendency to head out." Exurbans flee from the cities and inner-ring suburbs because they refuse to deal with the traffic, rising mortgages, and "too diverse and liberal" images in their faces each day. Americans, who move more than any other culture in the world, rarely confront problems. They move instead.

And despite suburbia's tendency to withdraw and segregate from the rest of society, Brooks concludes that suburban Americans, who share a fiery imagination and spiritual longing for the best life possible, are so future-minded that we should keep our eyes on them - the future of culture, business and life depends on them.

Ultimately, "On Paradise Drive" is far from a sociological milestone, but delightfully sharp and funny. Whether you take Brooks' optimism seriously or not, his initial witty insights on the dynamics of cul-de-sacs and homeowner's associations surely entertains.