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The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need
Juliet B. Schor · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorNickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Barbara Ehrenreich · 240 pages
The author's experience holding low-wage jobs in three parts of the U.S. in the late 1990s.
The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke
Elizabeth Warren, Amelia Warren Tyagi · 271 pages
" ... provide ... evidence that the culprit is not "over-consumption" ... they point to the ferocious bidding war for housing and decent schools that has quietly engulfed America's suburbs, driving up the cost of raising children in the middle class"--Jacket flap.
Janesville: An American Story
Amy Goldstein · 351 pages
"A Washington Post reporter's intimate account of the fallout from the closing of a General Motors' assembly plant in Janesville, Wisconsin--Paul Ryan's hometown--and a larger story of the hollowing of the American middle class. This is the story of what happens to an industrial town in the American heartland when its factory stills--but it's not the familiar tale. Most observers record the immedi
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
Hans Rosling · 342 pages
SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes And Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner · 279 pages
The New York Times bestselling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling more than four million copies in thirty-five languages and changing the way we look at the world.Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with Superfreakonomics, and fans and newcomers alike will find that the freakquel is even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first.SuperFreakonomics challenges the way
Consumed - How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults & Swallow Citizens Whole
Benjamin R. Barber · 406 pages
Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis
Robert D. Putnam · 386 pages
"A groundbreaking examination of the growing inequality gap from the bestselling author of Bowling Alone: why fewer Americans today have the opportunity for upward mobility. It's the American dream: get a good education, work hard, buy a house, and achieve prosperity and success. This is the America we believe in--a nation of opportunity, constrained only by ability and effort. But during the last
The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life
Anu Partanen · 448 pages
A Finnish journalist and naturalized American citizen compares and contrasts life in the U.S. with life in the Nordic region to encourage Americans to draw on practices from the Nordic way of life to create a fairer, happier, more secure, and less stressful society. At a 2012 conference on social mobility, where experts discussed whether people worldwide were attaining a better life than their pa
In CHEAP We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue
Lauren Weber · 336 pages
Cheap. Cheap suit. Cheap date. Cheap shot. It's a dirty word, an epithet laden with negative meanings. It is also the story of Lauren Weber's life. As a child, she resented her father for keeping the heat at 50 degrees through the frigid New England winters and rarely using his car's turn signals-to keep them from burning out. But as an adult, when she found herself walking 30 blocks to save $2 o
Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class
Noam Scheiber · 384 pages
The End of Men: And the Rise of Women
Hanna Rosin · 310 pages
Men have been the dominant sex since, well, the dawn of mankind. And yet, as journalist Hanna Rosin discovered, that long-held truth is no longer true. At this unprecedented moment, women are no longer merely gaining on men; they have pulled decisively ahead by almost every measure. Already "the end of men" -- the phrase Rosin coined -- has entered the lexicon as indelibly as Simone de Beauvoir's
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
Katherine Boo · 256 pages
The dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century's great, unequal cities. In this fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human. Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts
Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First Century Delhi
Rana Dasgupta · 455 pages
"In Capital, Commonwealth Prize-winning author Rana Dasgupta examines one of the great trends of our time: the expansion of the global elite. Capital is an intimate portrait of the city of Delhi which bears witness to the extraordinary transmogrification of India's capital. But it also offers a glimpse of what capitalism will become in the coming, post-Western world. The story of Delhi is a parabl
Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation
Michael Zielenziger · 340 pages
The world's second-wealthiest country, Japan once seemed poised to overtake America. But its failure to recover from the economic collapse of the early 1990s was unprecedented, and today it confronts an array of disturbing social trends. Japan has the highest suicide rate and lowest birthrate of all industrialized countries, and a rising incidence of untreated cases of depression. Equally as troub
Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market
Eric Schlosser · 320 pages
In Reefer Madness, the best-selling author of Fast Food Nation investigates America's black market and its far-reaching influence on our society through three of its mainstays -- pot, porn, and illegal immigrants. The underground economy is vast; it comprises perhaps 10 percent -- perhaps more -- of America's overall economy, and it's on the rise. Eric Schlosser charts this growth, and finds its r
The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life
Richard Florida · 434 pages
Here, Richard Florida traces the fundamental theme that runs through a host of seemingly unrelated changes in American society: the growing role of creativity in our economy. He describes a society in which the creative ethos is increasingly dominant.
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Jared Diamond · 592 pages
"In his Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?" "As in Guns, G
Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture
Ellen Ruppel Shell · 296 pages
An Atlantic correspondent uncovers the true cost—in economic, political, and psychic terms—of our penchant for making and buying things as cheaply as possibleFrom the shuttered factories of the rust belt to the look-alike strip malls of the sun belt—and almost everywhere in between—America has been transformed by its relentless fixation on low price. This pervasive yet little examined obsession is
Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion
Elizabeth L. Cline · 258 pages
Evaluates the costs of low-priced clothing while tracing the author's own transformation to a conscientious shopper, a journey during which she visited a garment factory, learned to resole shoes, and shopped for local, sustainable clothing.
Dogs and Demons: Tales From the Dark Side of Modern Japan
Alex Kerr · 432 pages
"In an ancient tale, a Chinese emperor asks his court painter about the easiest and most difficult subjects to paint. The painter replies, "Dogs are difficult, demons are easy." To Alex Kerr, a longtime resident expert and observer, Japan's "dogs" are the vital activities that sustain an ecologically and culturally responsible economy, while the expedient "demons" are the million-dollar boondoggle
Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else
Chrystia Freeland · 330 pages
There has always been some gap between rich and poor, but it has never been wider - and now the rich are getting wealthier at such breakneck speed that the middle classes are being squeezed out. While the wealthiest 10 per cent of Americans, for example, receive half the nation's income, the real money flows even higher up, in the top 0.1 per cent. As a transglobal class of highly successful profe
World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction
Immanuel Wallerstein · 109 pages