Rating: 
Summary: The story of today's reality, it's a great story!
Review: Finally someone isn't telling us the sky is falling! And this someone is speaking out with statistics and scientific research as the evidence. Eveyone, especially politicians and voters should read this book. I feel much more confident about bringing a new baby into this world after reading this book. Easy, informative, and inspirational. Read it and feel better for a change.
Rating: 
Summary: By every measure, life is better than ever!
Review: Greg Easterbrook informs readers that our perceptions of life today are wrong. By every objective measure such as life span, overall health, income levels, housing, luxuries, leisure time, etc., life is better today than it ever has been. So why aren't we happier than ever?The first few chapters explain how life is better than ever, which left me feeling quite inspired and grateful to have been born now vs. in the past. No matter how much we romanticize the past, life is just better today! Small personal note here, I think that I may disagree with him a little bit. I believe my parent's generation did do a little better than us. Almost everyone my age were kids when their parents were my age, and we remember our houses when we were kids being bigger, and generally having better vacations, cars, etc., then we can afford now that we are that age. But that may be peculiar to just my social circle. The following chapters discusses new problems brought about by improved living conditions, such as traffic, noise, feeling rushed, too many choices to make, etc. All are better to deal with than the old problems that had existed before. They also deal with why people, who are living better than 99% of the people who have ever existed, aren't happier than they are. Lack of spirituality, lots of spare time to be depressed, and a constant barrage of negative news seem to be the answer. This is one of the reasons I find it difficult to watch the news any more. It's 24 hours a day of terrorism, war, crime, death, global warming, and predictions of bad things that will come. The last couple of chapters is where Mr. Easterbrook misses the mark. He points out we still have serious problems like lack of universal health care and poverty. He is alluding that government should step in and solve these problems, not realizing he is contradicting almost everything prior in the book. Our lives have improved largely due to freedom and the marketplace allowing us to create and grow richer. Why does he believe gov't is the solution to these other problems? Why not turn the marketplace loose on these problems instead so people can find ways to enrich themselves by helping others? I also believe he doesn't explain what poverty is in the US today. If your family of four lives in a two bedroom apartment, with power, heat, tv and no one starving, does that sound like being poor? Well, that's how many poor families in the US live today. That lifestyle would be considered well off in much of the rest undeveloped world, and living very well considering the lives of people of generations past. Overall, I enjoyed the book and have become more appreciative of just how lucky we are today.
Rating: 
Summary: Remember Julian Simon?
Review: Gregg Easterbrook is usually a very original writer, but in this volume, he picks up on the theme that the late Julian Simon developed into a full-fledged career: that life, by all economic measures, is getting better and better, and those who say it's getting worse are misled. Julian Simon become a minor celebrity making these assertions in the 1970s and 1980s; in fact, his audience, many of whom credited Simon with helping them overcome depression, literally loved the man. Simon was clearly an antidote for the excessive gloom-and-doom predictions of the 1970s. But after predicting unlimited health and prosperity for all of mankind in his magnum opus, "The State of Humanity," what happened? 1. The collapse of the Soviet Union turned a modern nation into a 3rd world country with rampant malnutrition and an abortion rate of nearly 60% of all pregnancies. 2. Africa was ravaged by war and AIDS. 3. American wages fizzled to the point where two-parent families with an at-home mom are nearly non-existent, and the U.S. has the highest mortality rate of any modernized nation (26th globally). 4. Our political leaders and corrupt businessmen shipped our good-paying jobs to India and told us to apply at Wal-Mart. Meanwhile, the development of uber-orwellian surveillance technology gives these same corrupt, perfidious individuals the ability to ruin your life like never before. But don't worry - that same surveillance technology also gives you and your preteen sons unlimited access to porn! Those of us who have managed to hold on to some measure of economic comfort have been advised to think of ourselves as "personal brands" and to get over any silly illusion of having a private life. 5. Oh yeah, there's that problem of terrorists getting their hands on biochem and nukes. 6. There's a lot of quirky "cultural" tidbits, too, like how a guy who makes a film about Jesus almost literally gets crucified himself, but people who break the law to issue marriage licenses to gays are heroes. (Refer back to point 4 about the folks at the top of our cultural food chain.) Someone once said that the world has become so vast, you can generate any statistical picture you want. Maybe we are about to enter a blessed golden age. Just be sure to tell me when it arrives, because I think I'll miss it.
Rating:
Summary: A book every American should own...
Review: Gregg Easterbrook sets a record within the first 40 or 50 pages by smashing virtually every urban legend of the "everything is getting worse" crowd that saturates our culture. His unbridaled sense of optimism is contagious, and the sheer magnitiude of our current health, peace and prosperity that he chronicles is stunning. His work is a lifeboat for anyone drowning in the sea of doom-and-gloom ink that radiates from every so called expert in our society. Just the first 50 pages alone are worth four stars! Yet Easterbrook goes farther to examine why after all our successes, we still cling to fears of any and everything. He offers a handful of theories that probably combine in one way or another to explain our constant anxiety and inability to see the good in our lives, and how on some level this may be a good thing (what an optimist!) This book doesn't have any political bent to it, but I imagine it really irritates anyone with that typical knee-jerk hatred of the United States, especially to see the incredible successes of this country in the last generation.
Rating:
Summary: A book every American should own...
Review: Gregg Easterbrook sets a record within the first 40 or 50 pages by smashing virtually every urban legend of the "everything is getting worse" crowd that saturates our culture. His unbridaled sense of optimism is contagious, and the sheer magnitiude of our current health, peace and prosperity that he chronicles is stunning. His work is a lifeboat for anyone drowning in the sea of doom-and-gloom ink that radiates from every so called expert in our society. Just the first 50 pages alone are worth four stars! Yet Easterbrook goes farther to examine why after all our successes, we still cling to fears of any and everything. He offers a handful of theories that probably combine in one way or another to explain our constant anxiety and inability to see the good in our lives, and how on some level this may be a good thing (what an optimist!) This book doesn't have any political bent to it, but I imagine it really irritates anyone with that typical knee-jerk hatred of the United States, especially to see the incredible successes of this country in the last generation.
Rating:
Summary: Illusory affluence
Review: I found an interesting mix of both good and bad ideas in this book. Easterbrook is generally on track where he documents how far people in developed democratic countries have come from the historical lot of the rest of humanity. But he overstates how "affluent" we really are, because most of us have to depend on wage slavery and easy credit to try to buy the sort of lifestyle held up to us as normative by advertising and Hollywood. The U.S. per capita GDP of $30,000 a year simply cannot sustain that level of material consumption. In reality, the truly affluent people have plentiful incomes from sources that pay automatically regardless of one's health, race, behavior or other circumstances. Your annuity, trust fund or other wealth-holding instrument, unlike your boss, can't fire you. The rest of us, if we were financially responsible, would live extremely frugally on whatever wage income we earned because of the predatory nature of American life beyond the patronage of the wealthy. Easterbrook also identifies the ultimate futility of wealth once you have met your basic needs. Income correlates strongly with happiness when you're starving, sick, naked and exposed to the elements. But once you get a full belly, some healthcare, decent clothes and a comfortable place to sleep at night, the correlation breaks down. Happiness comes from sources like relationships, certain cognitive habits and a sense of "meaning," which cannot readily be turned into commodities, though that hasn't stopped the self-help industry from trying. Finally wealth can't buy you freedom from aging and death, though Easterbrook puts in the disclaimer that science could provide even that some day. As for "meaning," Easterbrook laments that many Western Europeans, especially, but also to a lesser extent educated Americans, have decided that they can't find it from religious beliefs any more. Easterbrook acknowledges that secular sources of meaning exist, without stating explicitly that a belief in god is unnecessary. Postulating a god doesn't solve the "meaning" problem any way, because many people find the conjectured "meanings" of life proffered by religion traditions absurd or offensive. Whole nations have changed religions in a generation or two with no apparent practical effect on net happiness, suggesting that religion isn't nearly as important as many people believe. In general I would like to see Easterbrook's book start a debate about the nature and uses of wealth in our society. Our economy has demonstrated spectacularly that it can produce literal mountains of junk food, unlistenable pop music CD's and novels about the antichrist. How about turning some of that productive potential towards things the world really needs, especially for the billions of have-nots who live little better than animals?
Rating:
Summary: It's time for this book
Review: I know there are a lot of naysayers out there, but I found this book very interesting and would recommend it to anyone. Some people just don't want to hear the positive news about life (a media conspiracy?), but for those who want a more positive perspective, I think Easterbrook has done a very good job of making the case that we have much to appreciate and be grateful for. Especially in these days when the news from Iraq is so discouraging, I believe this is a very worthwhile and well-reasoned book.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Thesis, Shoddy Legwork
Review: I read all the great reviews on this book, and thought the thesis sounded good, so I bought it. Then I discovered that the author is big on making large, sweeping statements, and very short on legwork to back those statements up. For instance, in several places, the author states the crime rate is going down, and that's a good thing. Then he states this is because of changes in police tactics, and because of a general rise in income levels. He goes on to state that the crime rate is falling because of "falling access to guns in many areas," and also that one down side is that incarceration rates are up, and this is a blot on American society. The author could never seem to entertain some interesting facts--like 39 states, in the last decade or so, passing right to carry laws. That firearms ownership is on the increase, and guns are more available, not less. So, his standard liberal theory, that less guns==more crime, falls apart in the face of reality, but rather than give credit where credit is due, he takes the typical knee jerk reaction, and fudges the numbers. And perhaps, just perhaps, those higher incarceration rates are one of the various _reasons_ for a lower crime rate. Another for instance--the author states that the divorce rate has fallen, and now stabilized. Of course, the author doesn't bother to mention that fewer people are getting married in the first place, which may more than offset the lower divorce rate, in real terms. But why bother with puny little facts, when you can paint with a big brush promoting the standard liberal view? And another--the author states that SAT scores have been rising, and this shows the success of the public school system. We don't have to bother with the facts of the case, I suppose, that the test has been changed numerous times over the last decade or two, in response to various criticisms, so there's no direct comparison between the older test scores and newer ones any longer. And the IQ scores that the US Army keeps track of are rising. This is interesting, but let's not try to take into account there could be many reasons for this, like more college bound kids entering the Army, due to generous education benefits. No, let's just chalk this up as wonderful public schools. I think the author could have made a good case that things are getting better, without having to fall back on standard liberal dogma. It's too be he didn't. It ruins the entire book.
Rating:
Summary: inspiring and upbeat!
Review: I really enjoyed this book, and recommend it highly. It is very well-written and presents a wide range of complex material in a very understandable format. Almost all the major indicators of social and economic life in the West are improving, yet depression is up and many feel a loss of meaning in life. The book has a spirituality dimension, but it also a policy book. Great reading!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: I thought the book does a great job of pointing out the ways in which things have been getting better for the average American/European. It is simply astonishing that people try to deny what is obvious. In the last chapters, Easterbrook delves into a prescription for the future of the US. Higher minimum wages and controls on "perposterous CEO paydays, along with universal health care coverage. This seemed a little strident at times especially with regard to the CEOs but his ideas are reasonable and caused me to reconsider my positions.
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