The kitschy chapter titles & silly cartoons keep it light, but the subject matter is dead serious. This book should be on the required-reading list for everyone living the gated-community, SUV-driving, instant-credit lifestyle. The final chapters on the transition to voluntary simplicity are full of wisdom & eminently practical suggestions.

Ran across this in the library when I was looking for another book. I’d seen the PBS show and meant to get around to reading the book, but it slipped from my top-ten list, as these things sometimes do. So I checked it out and consumed it in a couple of days. It really has me thinking about stuff I’m already concerned with—mindful consumption v. conspicuous consumption, the environmental cost of our consumption, keeping up with the Joneses, the Voluntary Simplicity movement. An earlier post on this provides an overview and a lot of details on the book, so I won’t repeat those points. I will say this: if you’re concerned with both your quality of life and how you live with (and not on) the earth, read this book.

Everyone in America should read this book.

The authors compare our level of consumption to a disease, hence the title. At first I thought it was just a gimmick, but now I believe our over-consumption truly is a disease that we need to treat and eventually cure.

Bankruptcies and foreclosures are happening at a higher rate than ever before. Our expectations for the size of our houses and cars grow and grow and grow with no signs of slowing down. Just about every moderate- to large-sized city in the country has traffic problems. And too many of the vehicles on the road are disgustingly fuel-inefficient. We work too much and spend too little time with our families and friends. Our kids go to school and are bombarded by ads in the halls, in their classrooms, and in their textbooks. (Not to mention the advertising and marketing that bombards them outside of school.) More and more, cities throughout America are starting to look eerily identical because big chains are replacing locally owned, unique businesses. We use too much paper, too much oil, too much of everything. I could go on and on.

Before I read this book, I would find myself in despair about the state of our country and all these issues, not knowing how to go about trying to fix them. But this book showed me how all these problems are related in a fundamental way and that they are all symptoms of our over-consumption.

The book has a quiz you can take to determine your level of infection, and it has suggestions for both individual and community changes we can make to combat this disturbing disease.

Here’s just one of the many parts of the book that opened my eyes:

“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to the job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.”