Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic

by John De Graaf, David Wann, Thomas H. Naylor

In chapters with titles like ""Swollen Expectations"" and ""A Rash of Bankruptcies, "" Affluenza uses the whimsical metaphor of a disease to tackle a very serious the damage done -- to our health, our families, our communities, and our environment -- by the obsessive quest for material gain. The authors examine the origins, evolution, and symptoms of the affluenza epidemic. But more importantly, they explore cures and suggest strategies for rebuilding families and communities and for restoring and respecting the earth.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Economics, Politics, Psychology, Sustainability, Cultural

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let's begin with the end. The very end. "When your time comes and your whole life flashes before you, will it hold your interest? How much of the story will be about moments of clarity and grace, kindness and caring? Will the main character - you - appear as large and noble as life itself, or as tiny and absurd as a cartoon figure, darting frantically among mountains of stuff? It's up to you, and indeed, it's up to all of us!"

When you read those last words on page 247 of this convicting book, you will feel like you've finished a life's journey. And you will have wished it was not your own, though for too many of us the stories and scenes will seem familiar. Affluenza helps readers diagnose the symptoms, understand the causes, and finally find the cures for the disease of over consumption. This book is sobering to read in the way that a doctor's pronouncement of a chronic disease subdues. The news could be more troubling, even so the feeling of relief is tempered by the realization that the rest of life will need to be different.

It would be hard to ignore the wake-up call found in Affluenza urging people to check their wasteful (physically and spiritually intemperate) consumption. I can only imagine that a person who blows off this book is a person who is numb. Since consumerism acts on us like an anesthetic to genuine life, I bet that people can read this book without being moved by its admonitions. Too bad. And not me.

My short reviews that get published on my blog are not the place to develop subtle arguments. So let me just throw out a few things to consider.

I have no idea what the spiritual life of De Graff, Wann, and Naylor looks like. Perhaps they are Christians, or maybe not. By some of their comments, I suspect they are not conservative evangelical Christians. And this, from my perspective as anevangelical , is troubling. Disturbing because we do not often hear conservative evangelicals sounding so intelligent and spiritually mature. I've heard countless sermons and testimonies that start the question, "When your time comes and your whole life flashes before you..." But none have ever finished, "...will it hold your interest?" Evangelicals tend to be concerned about the way God will react to the story of our lives, as if at the end of all things His view and our view will appear any different. The authors of Affluenza have it right. A life worth looking back on is a life that holds the interest of the person who lived it, as well as the appreciation of others. Consumerism in no way - absolutely no possible way - prepares a person to reflect on a life well lived.

This book is a resource. The style of writing is such that it is a quick read, mixing anecdotes, facts, and satire. Don't let the tone fool you. This appears to be a well constructed and researched book. The end notes and bibliography are worth exploring. And the suggested cures appeal to those who want to do something right now.

I'll finish up with one more quote, this from page 115, "The American race-car lifestyle is fast approaching burnout because it requires long, stressful workweeks that eat up chunks of life, natural resources, and health. It programs us to substitute consumption for both citizenship and companionship. And it tries to meetnonmaterial needs with material goods, a losing strategy."

Read this book.

[Terry Lynn · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is such an important topic but the writing was so bad that I just couldn't bear it. It's WAY too polemical. I'm looking for an analysis of the problem (and found it in _Born To Buy_) but these authors seem more interested in making the reader outraged. Their examples are way over the top exaggerations--usually punctuated with exclamation marks--designed more to hook the emotions than to engage the mind. It reads like a used-car sales pitch or an infomercial with an agenda rather than a serious treatment of a serious issue. This book does its subject matter a real disservice.

[Jerry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just finished reading this after seeing it on the libraries sale shelf. The first half of the book would have earned 4 stars from me. Right on... total agreement with a lot of what is stated. Further in though, I found myself getting a bit frustrated with what I would call a left leaning agenda.. global warming, positive affirmation of Marxism, proposing environmental taxes on cars, carbon credits.... things that I think are just going to make guys like Al Gore richer. Maybe he will be able to buy another 10,000 sq ft beachfront mansion.. Overall, the book identifies a legitimate problem, and gives a lot of great examples, but ultimately the second half of the book lost my interest. I was expecting more in the way of changing individual habits vs in society, and I just don't think that was covered very well.

[Quirkyreader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though this was the second edition, it still had some good information.

[Jen]

My favorite quote from this book is from T.S. Eliot: "We are the hollow men. We are the stuffed men" (page 72). This hollowness or emptiness of modern American life, the breaking up of families and communities, the pollution in the environment, according to the authors, is all in large part due to affluenza, "a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more." (pg.2)

I love the ideas in this book and I liked how it made me search myself for materialism and excess. I think a yearly checkup would be a great idea. But while I thought this book was a good introduction to these ideas, I wonder if I would've preferred the documentary upon which this is based because the writing style DROVE ME CRAZY! The first 170 pages are setting the stage, painting a portrait of American culture with almost randomly selected statistics and anecdotes; every paragraph of every section in every chapter could begin with the word "meanwhile." For example, part of the chapter "Chronic Congestion" could be summarized as "Airlines are congested with stuff. Meanwhile, in California, a woman was almost hit by a falling piece of airplane. Meanwhile, Jim in British Columbia collects space junk. Meanwhile, University of Arizona "garbologists" (garbage anthropologists) are studying Tucson landfills." Wha? I had to force myself to keep reading. Then, when strategies to combat affluenza were finally presented, I found those strategies to not be, well, not especially helpful (i.e. "lobby the government to reduce annual working hours" - seriously? I can see lobbying your employer, or choosing a career that is less demanding, but federal mandates? Another suggestion: "consider co-housing" - uh, maybe not).

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in these issues (and maybe even some who are not!). But maybe "Your Money or Your Life" or "Simple Prosperity" would be better books for me, I don't know (haven't read them).

[Erin · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I could give this book no stars, I would. It is deeply disturbing that such a tome of complete indoctrination is being passed off as a textbook in our schools. I knew the authors were leftist nuts right from the preface where they apologized for referring to Americans as Americans- hey authors: If someone is from Brazil, they are Brazilian. If someone is from Canada, they are Canadian. Only people from the USA are Americans as we are the only country called America!

The book starts off with some decent info about overspending and nature, but many points of this book were refuted in "The Two Income Trap". It is rather obvious that the authors have little understanding of the daily cost of living in this country for average joes. They also can't seem to grasp the concept that more resources are used every year not because the average American constantly ups their consumption rate, but because every year we import 14 million new people into this country. More immigrants came here between 1990-2000 than in the entire history of this country. The founder of Earth Day stated that we could never be an environmentally conscious country until we end immigration, but that notion is taboo to leftists.

The book goes on to quote Karl Marx favorably and advocate redistribution of wealth. It also disntegrates into a blatent commercial for global warming. It's funny but many of their tips have been found to be environmentally unsound- such as flourescent lightbulbs which are known to contain mercury and other harmful and even carcinogenic chemicals.

Government oversight has been proven to be a failure...just look at the FDA which ignores research until dire consequences occur. Even still, they allow drugs to be sold without proper testing, allow harmful additives into food and drink all while slapping on the FDA approved label. Government is the problem, not the solution.

The authors solutions for thr most part are way off base. This book is outdated and irrelevant. Glad I got it for free. ;)

[Trena · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn't a great book; the title was really the best thing about it. I wavered between 2 and 3 stars. Ultimately, the breadth (though not the depth) of the content just barely got it to 3 stars. I did not really enjoy reading it and it took me about three weeks to get through, even though it is neither long nor dense.

It has nothing new to say, although that may be my fault because the first edition was written in 2002 and at that time it may have been new. Now all the information is old hat among those concerned about climate change, waste, and consumerism. So it says a little bit about a lot of things and nothing in depth, very much like a television program (I've not seen the PBS TV series on which the book was based).

The tone is way off for the current economic climate, although I can't fault the book for that because it was appropriate at the time it was written. Also, I don't think the current economic downturn is going to have any lasting effect on American spending, debt, or consumption. I think it would take actual commodity shortages for that to happen.

My biggest issue with this book was its superficiality. It covered several interesting aspects of affluenza--consumption, debt, environmentalism, etc. It was a good overview of challenges arising from overconsumption. But there was little detail offered on any subject.

There was also little information provided for acting at the individual level, which was very frustrating to me.

I'd call this a "beginner" book. If you're curious about issues of overconsumption, debt, and global warming and are looking for a place to start it is a great read without an overwhelming amount of information. But if you already know the basics about the issues, it won't take you any further.

[Shanelle Sorensen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent points, great information, and it really inspired me to want to change.
My issues with it, however, were two-fold:
First, this book was based off a documentary. Obviously a book requires a lot more material than a documentary. In addition to it reading more like a documentary (which I don't think is a good thing), there were many points where I could kind of feel or sense the padding. Not a big deal, and it didn't make or break the read for me. I still learned a lot and consider a very valuable read.
My second issue was that I felt it was a little exaggerated. I felt the authors took extreme examples (like couples that would fly somewhere for a weekend for the sole purpose of shopping at a particular place, where they spend thousands of dollars in one weekend) and projected that as normal American society. I don't think this is fair or accurate. I don't disagree that hyper-consumerism is a huge problem, but...you know.
But like I said, I still really enjoyed the read. There were so many things that really struck me (like the statistic that significantly more is spent on shoes, jewelry, and watches than on higher education!) and, for those that allow it to be, has the potential to be a life-changing book.

[Anna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Affluenza was not the refreshing, motivating read I had anticipated. This was a depressing, highly critical description of what for most thinking people is common knowledge. The scope of the book was narrow, and the tone's prejudice weakened an important message. Affluenza has been written over and over again (and much more elegantly and effectively, in my opinion). I recommend Tolstoy, Dickens, and history itself.

[Tamra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Excellent book. Or, at least the parts that I liked were excellent. The parts I didnt like, though, were AWFUL. In fact, it was so painful that I skipped about 100 pages, right in the middle of the book.

The book starts with Symptoms of Affluenza. I was going right along with them, nodding in agreement and shouting, "Right on!" every 10 pages. But then some of the comments were weird and frustrating to me. There was very little scholarship in this book, so there would be stats that didn't necessarily mean what the authors said they meant, and I wanted to be like, "Yeah, but, what about...?"

And then the chapter about how Vietnam protesters were more idealistic than college kids today. Less caught up in the Affluenza. ... And that chapter made me mad. For too many angry reasons to go into right now. Just know that most of the reasons start with me saying something like, "Oh, don't even START with me!"

So I skipped the last half of Symptoms. Didn't read a word of the Causes section, and started up again with Treatments. Most of which I was all for: More communing with nature. Less TV. No 80 hour work weeks. Smaller houses. Less "needs".

But I can't wholeheartedly jump on the Affluenza bandwagon. A little too preachy. A few too many opinions-badly-disguised-as-scholarship. A little too much hype and hysteria and conspiracy. A LOT too fanatical (you also should learn to live off $8,000 a year!).

Having said that, I'll re-read it in a few years. But I'll skip right to the Treatments section.

[Margie · Rating 3 out of 5]

In each of the past four years more Americans declared personal bankruptcy than graduated from college. Our annual production of solid waste would fill a convoy of garbage trucks stretching halfway to the moon. We have twice as many shopping centers as high schools.

Fascinating, important information, right? Unfortunately, Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic doesn't go much beyond the informative. It's not wholly without analysis, but I wanted so much more. (And yes, that's meant to be ironic.)

This book is based on two PBS documentaries. One of the authors writes that "television, even at its most informative, is still a superficial medium; you simply can't put that much material into an hour. And that's the reason for this book: to explain "affluenza" in more depth, with more examples, more symptoms, more evidence, more-thorough exposition." I've not seen the documentaries so I can't comment on whether this goal was achieved, but note that a more in-depth analysis is not mentioned.

The authors have used the metaphor of illness to describe the aspirational acquisitiveness which afflicts our American society. The metaphor largely works. The first section, 'Symptoms,' has chapters like 'Swollen Expectations' and 'An Ache for Meaning'. The other sections are 'Causes' and 'Treatment'. Unfortunately the metaphor is so overplayed as to become irritating, cutesy, and trite.

I liked some of the facts and figures presented, and many of the quotes. Here are a few of my favorites:

"If I'm earning money watching my stocks grow and someone else is working hard as a teacher, why should I pay a lower tax rate? That may be good for me economically, but it doesn't build a healthy society." -Michele McGeoy, millionaire software developer

David Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, demonstrated that people who do things poorly usually appear more confident and self-assured than those who do things well. "Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices," wrote Dunning, "but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it." The book then asks, As a culture, aren't we blissfully ignorant? Aren't we erroneously confident we'll find peer approval, self-esteem, and meaning in material things, if we just keep looking?

Last one:
"The trouble with being consumers is that consumers have no duties or responsibilities or obligations to their fellow consumers. Citizens do. They have the obligation to care about their fellow citizens, and about the integrity of the town's environment and history." -James Kunstler in The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape.

A quibble: in chapter 10, a paragraph starts, "Felicia Edwards, an African-American mother of two, who lives in a small apartment in a Hartford, Connecticut housing project...." Ms. Edwards is the only person in the entire book whose race is mentioned. It's a glaring exception. WTH does it add to the discussion? It doesn't provide necessary context. It's completely gratuitous.

[Nikki · Rating 2 out of 5]

I checked this book out because it was on a list that appeared, I think, in the Food and Drink issue of the New York Times Magazine. (You'll see many others in my current or recent reading list.) I saw the television documentary on which it was based several years ago, and I have to say that this is one case where the film made its point much better than the book did. This is quite often the case with PBS-type documentaries, but usually the books based on such films at least have a number of nice photographs that the reader can gaze on at leisure. Affluenza is illustrated largely with cartoons, and not very good ones at that.

To be fair, since the film was made and the book published, the same ground has been gone over and over in countless articles and books, so that it's all rather old hat even though the problems described persist. The fact that the boom times during which the book was written have ended brings some 20-20 hindsight, but I must confess that I skimmed the last several chapters extremely quickly. Perhaps one good thing to come out of the recession will be that books like this will become curiosities of a bygone age, describing a condition that no longer exists. In the meantime, most people can skip this book.

[Daniel Gallagher · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a life changing book for me. I've always been concerned about energy usage and the environment, but this book explains in great detail how consumerism is the driver for a lot of problems in Western society. The drive for more uses more energy, creates more waste, encourages isolation, and feeds a machine of industrialization that exists only for profit. Advertising dollars are spent, particularly since the advent of TV, to socialize us all into thinking more is better, newer is better, and throwing things out is perfectly okay. The style is accessible and the details revealing. There are a ton of references that explore related topics from living simply to personal finance. All around, it's an amazing treasure trove of detail presented logically and persuasively. There are not a lot of "solutions" given, but it should be pretty clear to anyone who thinks honestly about these topics: buy less - a lot less, and downside your life in as many ways as you can. You'll do a lot for the environment, your community, and feel a lot better about your place in the world.

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the premise of the book. I've been trying to lead a simpler life for a number of reasons, and this book definitely reinforces why a simpler life may be the answer to many of our current social "afflictions." I gave the book 3 stars because I liked the facts it presents, but I found the illness metaphors to be drawn-out and annoying. I think the book would be stronger if it weren't trying to compare our over-consuming society to the flu at every possible point.

My only other concern about this book is that I found while I was reading it, I was very anxious about money and possessions (I've heard others make similar remarks about the stress they felt while reading this book, so I can't be alone in this.) While simplifying and cutting out unnecessary consumerism is a good thing, being stressed out about how you're doing in the grand scheme of things can be just as dangerous as overconsumption.

[Erin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointing. This book reads like an infomercial, and the flu metaphor is so trite, and was so overused, that I actually felt embarrassed for the authors.

[Ryan Tascas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone in western society should read this.

[Carl Wade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Front inside Resource: "The Circle of Simplicity" by Cecile Andrew.
Pg v. Who is David Ross Brower? He Knew about the commandment to multiply and subdue the earth, but he was against the accelerating speed. What would be a slow rate and who decides?
Pg 184. Cecile Andrews is the one that sid "Live simply so that others can simply live."
Pg 74. Jesus said what if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul, Matt. 16:26.
Pg 131. The Bible teaches it's easier for a camel to pass through a needle's eye than...
Pg 284. www.simplicityforum.org author De Graaf lives in Seattle. Wann wrote "Biologic" 1994 and "Deep Design" 1996. Vicki Robin wrote "Your Money or Your Life" and lives on Whidbey Island, WA.
Pg. 288 www.bkconnection.com some kind of simplicity group.
Pg. xvi. get the movie Affluenza sept. 15, 1997 on PBS also0 Escape from Aff...
Pg. xvii. Conservative cities Salt Lake City and Houston.
Pg. xix. Simplicity-friendly cities may be a hope for affordable housing.
Pg. 75. He is getting into serving the earth-creations. Why does he put that before people?
Pg.77. Amish have 1/5 the depression rate.
Pg. 83. Big gap between rich and poor. What poor? 40 percent of all Americans own no assets at all. 3 out of 5 new jobs pay less than median hourly wage of $13.53.
Pg. 104. Living in a toxic stew polluters are "getting away with murder".
Pg. 95. 40,00 killed in cars plus 6,000 pedestrian killed. I thinks that's per year.
Pg. 119 30,000 deaths from reactions to prescription drugs.
Pg. 131. Resource "The Simple Life" by David Shi.
Pg. 140. Catholic Church had so many feast days for saints that the protestant worked more day and thus the "Protestant ethic." Morris, inventor of the morris chair believed decent wealthy life required. 1. a healthy body 2. an active mind 3. an occupation that promote 1. & 2. 4. beautiful world to live in.
Pg. 141 Teddy Roosevelt got caught up in the simple life on the 1880. "The ladies Home Journal" promoted simplicity. Lavor demanded shorter hours for the good of man but the problem was the work. It wasn't 1.&2. above.
Pg. 142. Resource "Work Without End" by Benjamin Hunnicutt. Published when? 10 hour work week that would leave time for ministry.
Pg. 143. Useful avocations in spare time.
Pf. 198. In the past we worked on fewer people working with more resources. We should have more people working less resources.
Pg. 203. How about a will for any item that when you buy that states what you will do with it when you are done with it. Send the old item back to the factory when you buy a new one.
Pg. 209. Co-housing design import from Denmark to CO 10 acre 27 houses stopped short of a Church. Called Harmony Village. Also nomad community in Bolder CO and on-going.com in Portland, OR.
Pg. 224. Suggests 1,500 hour work year? What would be best for home school father?
Pg. 227. Crime goes up with unemployment but not with a short work week? I don't think so.
Pg. 236. This would make more sense if people got no satisfaction from their work. But for some there is satisfaction from work.
Pg. 237. "Sustainable Seattle" by Lee Hatcher.
Pg. 241. The idea fo a checkup or survey is brought up. This would be good for a Church.

[Lindsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book, and the premise that time is more valuable than stuff...people/relationships/community are more important than material possessions...we should use our efficiencies and technological advances to enjoy more time with our family and friends (and connect with ourselves), rather than to produce more more more.

Two days after completing this book, I was driving downtown with my goddaughter (4 years old), when she pointed at a huge billboard with a Dr. Pepper can on it, exclaiming, "hey there's Dr. Pepper!" Then, a few seconds later asked, "why was there a big picture of Dr. Pepper back there?" I tried to explain to her that it was an advertisement...that the people selling Dr. Pepper wanted to "remind" us that we should drink it. That they wanted us to be thirsty for Dr. Pepper so they could sell more drinks and make more money. Trying to explain advertising to a 4 year old was tough...and it saddened me to think of the challenges she will face growing up in this consumer-driven world we live in. I started thinking about the book...about how advertising reaches our children and "hooks" them at an early age...how we are bombarded with ads and encouraged to "buy buy buy!" I think the first step in solving the problem is recognizing the symptoms...and this book definitely taught me to do so.

A good read for all.

[Janie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Affluenza is a discursive smorgasbord. It has some interesting and useful descriptions and prescriptions (e.g., the 30 hour workweek as implemented by the Kellogg Company from the '30s to the '80s; tax policies that target big spenders on luxury items). But there's too much explored and explained too little.

They're a bit extreme about the causes and effects of the affluenza epidemic. It's the anti-panacea: it causes practically every ill.

I agree with a lot of the general principles around the book; it's easy because they're so nebulously presented and there are so many of them. (Maybe it would be better suited to group discussion than solo read?) The presentation (which involves a lot of emotional statistics) suggests to me it's targeting an audience who will be willing to take up the cause of 'voluntary simplicity' from their gut rather than their brain, and be satisfied by topical changes. Maybe that's not all bad, and the authors do mention that we need to be sure that our attempts have a high functional load, so we're not worrying ourselves sick over things that don't actually help much. But overall, that message gets lost.

I do wish the authors had been more clear about their political biases. I kept getting distracted by their name-dropping and finger-pointing.

[Jana Singley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The informational yet entertaining book, "Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic", by John De Graaf, David Wann, and Thomas Naylor showed me how much Americans really spend. This book was written to enlighten readers about how much Americans spend, and the epidemic to have to have something, as soon as it comes out. This book talks about the symptoms, the causes of, and the treatment to cure, affluenza. The book uses the whimsical metaphor of a disease, to catch readers' attention, and let them know about this very serious issue. Affluenza uses examples showing damage being done with family relationships, stress, and even depression. The "disease" Affluenza, is described as "...a painful, countagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more." I think, that if this book had more readers, there would be many more people changing their lifestyles. I believe that this book is necessary and important to have, especially the way the world is looking now. I feel that some of the methods used in this book are great, and that they would be very useful for people who are trying to change their ways. In conclusion, this book was inspiring, and helpful when thinking about ways to change my life for the betterment of myself.

[Kressel Housman · Rating 4 out of 5]

In some ways, the message of this book was exactly like all the millionaire/cheapskate books I've been reading recently: spend less and enjoy what you have. The difference is that while the aim of the cheapskate books is to get yourself out of debt so you can get rich, the aim of this book is to reduce consumption in order to save the environment. It's a noble cause, but personally, I'm more motivated to save my bank balance than the world. Perhaps in these days, it's precisely the same thing.

I noticed two kinds of reviews of this book on GoodReads: the lovers and the haters. I would have been a lover at a certain stage in my life, but I've read Eat the Rich, which is in some ways the antithesis of this book. It's almost laughable to read that "growing the economy" shouldn't be a goal politicians should pursue. On the other hand, the mess we're in now is because of the affluenza of the previous decade. Besides that, a greener economy would do the world good. So basically, I like the message of this book, but I don't believe the authors have the answer to everything.

[Anie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the book, but found it a bit disappointing. I'd heard very excellent things about it, and it didn't quite live up to par. The writing is a little lackluster -- the authors aren't particularly gifted with prose, and the rhetoric was a little much at times. More importantly, I didn't feel like I'd learned anything by the end of the book. As someone who's been thinking about these issues for a long time, the book felt more like a righteous snobfest than something that really expanded my knowledge and understanding of affluence-related problems. I still enjoyed myself, because it's hard not to enjoy righteous snobfests that you believe in, but I wouldn't recommend it to people who are already well-informed about these topics.

However, I ::would:: recommend it to people who are just getting into these issues. It's an approachable, manageable book, and (despite the hardcore rhetoric) does have some good data and explanations.

[Serena · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book because one quote in particular caught my attention:

"We hear the same refrain all the time from people: I have no life. I get up in the morning, day care, elder care, a 40 minute commute to work. I have to work late. I get home at night, there's laundry, bills to pay, jam something into the microwave. I'm exhausted, I go to sleep, I wake up and this routine begins all over again. This is what life has become in America."

This is something that resonates deeply with myself and a lot of the people I work with. This book is an interesting amalgamation of facts, studies and inferences that really don't add up to make a cohesive read. The book is pretty good at alarming you for the first two-thirds of the book, and then giving somewhat lame "solutions" in the last third.

I gave it a three because it's caused me to think a bit more about what I want, but I'm not even sure if it deserves that many stars based on the writing and the organization.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book will force you to reexamine your day to day life as an American consumer. This book takes a close look at the consequences and causes of our consumer culture and offers some alternatives to living a life controlled by "stuff". The information contained within may not be anything new to a lot of people, but when it is assembled with their somewhat humorous writing style, it really made me realize how absurd things have become. I liked this book because it didn't seem to have a political agenda (it contains arguments from both sides against commercialism and consumerism) and it was not simply chastising americans without offering solutions. It simply states the current situation, forces you to take a look at the life your living as a consumer, and asks you if you're happy with it.

[Johnny Galt · Rating 2 out of 5]

A little too simplified although I support the concept of it all.

Example: If you go back to Samuel Johnsons's dictionary of the English language, to consume meant to exhaust, to pillage, to lay waste, to destroy. In fact, even in our grandparents' generation, when somebody had tuberculosis, they called it 'consumption.' So up until this century to be a consumer was not to be a good thing, it was considered a bad thing.

Correct me if I am wrong but I think consumption in the tuberculosis sense meant that the disease consumed a person, not that they were dying because they consumed too much -.-

The book is also rather outdated since they claimed consumerism would be so out of control, people would be vacationing in space by the year 2007... The year is now 2010 and Richard Branson hasn't even made the maiden voyage.

[Linda Trionfo · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want a book that changes your entire outlook on a daily trip to the super market or mall this is it. The consumption of americans is so out of hand and gross. This book seems to cross all party lines and just give you the facts. I am a stats kind of girl and this is full of them but he is witty at the same time and really makes you think. Great for couples, Kenny and I have had many talks about how we can cut back, find more time for the family and give in less to the machine called " Keeping up with the Jones" though we never have had that mentality we still want really nice things and this made us realize how better spent our time could be wanting more time, more health and more friends. I have 2 copies if you want to borrow it!

[Dioscita · Rating 2 out of 5]

I skimmed more than read this book because it wasn't quite what I expected nor did it offer what I was hoping for. In fact, there was a short "quiz" to determine whether the reader has "symptoms of affluenza" and the results were laughable (i.e. they accepted up to twenty-five "yes" answers for the "way to go, keep staying healthy!" category when I checked yes for just six of them). So this book isn't for me. I can think of a few people (and I'm related to them) who could stand to take a peek in here, though, especially when the most crazed consumer time of year is almost upon us again (for me it seems to start at Halloween and goes right through Valentine's Day).

[ccoelophysis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just a couple things that jumped out at me: This book was written a few years before the economic recession and yet the authors wrote it knowing it was coming, and soon. They knew that too many Americans place their hope in possessions and that was going to cause problems that we have now experienced since the publication of this book. The comparison of the American workweek and annual vacation days to other developed countries is eye-opening. Also interesting is the idea of taxing consumption instead of wealth. That would decrease the tax burden on the poor and seems to be an answer to the 1% problem.

[Sandra Strange · Rating 4 out of 5]

This excellent book treats the values of the American consumer economy and the serious effects of increasing American demand for consumer goods in all their forms--on politics, on families, on the environment. The format, with copious graphics, including chapter and subheadings, inviting spacing, and graphs and charts that are easy to read, makes the book more accessible reading, since the topic is pretty heavy. Informative and provocative, this book will help you clarify your own values, and lead you to question the implications of your own behavior.

[Jessica Culhane · Rating 1 out of 5]

Agree with Terry Lynn's review, which starts with, "This is such an important topic but the writing was so bad that I just couldn't bear it." At one point, I was astonished to read a particular factoid, and went on the good ol' internet to learn more. (I believe the "fact" was, Americans spend more on trash bags than 90 other countries spend on everything combined.) Turns out, it's not actually true, and is just a statement that's been repeated for so long that it's now assumed to be true. Whoah. Don't write a book without doing your research.