The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking in American Culture

A scholarly retelling of the history of the United States that focuses on the seemingly endless tension in North American culture between the liberty of independence (self-sufficient worth, contentment) versus the compulsion for personal achievement (accumulation, status-seeking, wealth). In Shi's account, this thread runs through history almost as a cultural pendulum, ever swinging and, in a sense, over-correcting, between the poles of rugged asceticism and wanton greed. Well written, fascinating framing of American studies with a history of ideas orientation.

A scholarly, well balanced and readable analysis of the historical struggle between materialism and post-materialism in American culture. The trouble is that the post-materialism so often regresses.

Best treatise on voluntary simplicity and materialism. This terrific historian is president of Furman University. (Biography Link Here)