The French gave us the term bourgeois, and then argued endlessly about what it meant. "Of or pertaining to the French middle classes," according to the Oxford English Dictionary. But it is not a simple matter of social class. To be bourgeois one must master a system of words, gestures and objects that define a way of life, a particular culture. It requires the exercise of self-control, and the ritualization of daily routines. This witty, observant ethnography decodes the culture that dominates France.