Friday, April 21, 2006

Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic by John de Graaf

When my daughter looked at Affluenza: The All Consuming Epidemic, she shook her head. "More for you to rant about!" she said. She had already heard my mini-lectures about how we did not need so many things. She had good reason to worry that I might start again, as I agreed with much of what I read in this book about American consumer habits. Many of us have too many things. Our credit cards are maxed out, and still we are not happy. John de Graaf and the coauthors of this book tell us how to modify our lives to work less, buy less, and be happier. It is now in a second edition. It sounds good to me.

De Graaf, John and others. Affluenza:The All-Consuming Epidemic. San Francisco, California: Berrett-Koehler, 2005. ISBN 1576753573

2 comments:

Dan Trabue said...

Did you see the Affluenza show hosted by Scott Simon on PBS a few years back? Great stuff.

Unless I'm mistaken, this book is an outgrowth of that - do you know?

Anonymous said...

Yes, it is. You can read more about the video and buy it at http://www.pbs.org/kcts/affluenza/ but I am going crazy trying to find video clips or written material for an on-line class that I'm teaching...