The Book of Snobs is a collection of weekly columns written in 1848 for Punch magazine by William Makepeace Thackeray. Thackeray may not have invented the word "snob", but the idea of an upwardly mobile mercantile middle class desperate to appear better born than they had been was still quite new in the 19th century. For a satirist, it was easy pickings.

势利,是人类社会中的一个非常顽固的弊病,是人性的一大弱点。19世纪英国著名作家威廉·梅克庇斯·萨克雷,用幽默辛辣的语言,全面、透彻地描绘了各种各样势利者的嘴脸,在当时的英国社会引起了巨大轰动。直到今天,在各个国家、各种群体中我们仍能看到各种各样势利者的身影。本书的出版,可以起到揭示势利、警醒世人的作用。