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Customer Review :
Makes you reflect on what happiness really is
What is progress? Gregg Easterbrook looks at that question, showing that while we have "progressed" a great deal in a very short time; most of us are feeling worse about our lives. Read this book and recognize that happiness isn't found in luxury.
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Good quick book to make you think
I was drawn to this book because of TMQ, what Mr. Easterbrook writes for ESPN. If you like that, then I would suggest you take a little bit, and enjoy a book that makes to think. Well thought out and written, with no bias for anything than the truth he describes. Enjoy.
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Too Many Exagerated Statistics to Prove His Arguement
The fact that so many endorse "The Progress Paradox" is nothing short of tragic. I am disappointed that the best reviewers got as far into the book as they did without noticing that the author spun many of the statistics to prove his point. He downplays the reality of poverty with false statistics. Recalling from memory, very close to the beginning of the book, Easterbrook states that the elderly no longer have to worry about being cared for. Perhaps he should have read Susan Sheehan's article in The New Yorker, "Not Poor Enough" which tells the true story about how the elderly are doing in this country. Has the author been to a state subsidized nursing home? He also strolled right over the problem of poverty with a completely false statistic about the number of children in the U.S. living under the poverty line. The list goes on and on. I was so impressed with the number of fallacies used to make his argument I started highlighting. My copy looks like Key West Christmas tree. How did the manuscript ever make it past the editor?
I think this book is written to help the 1% at the top of the pyramid feel better about themselves. Let them eat cake? Coincidently, the book was given to us by the wealthiest people we know who also happen to live in one of the premier independent living centers in the NE.
This book should be read as an example of fallacy in argument, and nothing more.
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Right on the money--if you're a socialist
If you like statistics, you'll love this book. It's filled with them throughout. That being said, the book was published in 2004, and many of the assumptions made in the beginning of the book are not as valid today. Additionally, I personally don't believe all of the statistical analysis presented in the book. However, I cannot refute it, because I don't have the time to research all of it.
Mr. Easterbrook is big on Universal Health Care and wealth redistribution. He's also an advocate, in this book, for increased spending on US foreign aid. I'm not sure any of these three answers are really problem fixers. Furthermore, I don't think the US can afford at least 2 of these three ideas. Maybe we can after we fix the US economy and the falling value of the dollar.
The point of the book is that we are all better off than those before us, and I believe that this point is valid and true. However, the book, for me, ended up becoming more of a "self-help" reading as the pages went on. This book became less enjoyable the more pages I read.
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Enjoyable, Thoughtful Read
This is an enjoyable read, one that I inevitably quoted after reading bits and pieces. Easterbrook's thesis just seems very apropos to contemporary American life today where the seemingly exponential societal progress is being questioned (even if just in those rare quiet moments) against the stress and work that so much stuff and accomplishment require.
It's packed with information: remarkable stuff that highlights how much development and change has happened in recent decades and that shows that we live in the best of times; sobering stuff about the pain and sadness that remain, and the horrible issues that remain to be addressed (or that have arisen because of societal change and development); insightful stuff that digs into why such things are happening and where the lack of happiness - for we're collectively feeling worse - are coming from.
In the end, gratitude, forgiveness, and remembering the greater good rise to the surface as corrective attitudes and behaviors. Easterbrook, a Christian, maintains that religion isn't necessary for these traits. Whether that's accurate or not, our society would be wise to listen to him.
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