Caitlin Doughty
The magnificent, hilarous and always fascinating mortician Caitlin Doughty (Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes) is back with another intriguing look at death.
Death is inevitable. But the way Americans and many in the west act, it is something shameful …
Thomas Thwaites
Could you build a toaster? “Sure,” you say. “I’d just get a kit on amazon.” No, from scratch? “Well yes, I could get all the parts online, probably Ebay, and cobble one together.” No, from real scratch. Mining the ore and refining it. Forming each delicate piece. Creating …
Lionel Shriver
Shriver’s oh-so-plausible dystopian novel follows four generations of the Mandible family. From the incredibly wealthy great-grandfather to his granddaughter and great grandson ( barely scraping by), the family fortunes run the gamut of the economic ladder. But all are soon falling, and fast.
What makes this novel both …
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
The third in their wildly popular Freakonimics series, Dubner and Levitt once again turn conventional wisdom on its ear. If you listen regularly to their free and awesome Podcasts, much of the content will be familiar. Unlike their previous books, which seek to disprove …
Laura Vanderkam
…What people do with their money is a choice, and these choices reflect our priorities. If we sport diamond rings but claim we don’t have money for date night, we are essentially saying that jewelry it worth more time to us than spending time with our spouse. If
J
eff Yeager
Lesson number one rule in Yeager’s amusing and instructive books: cheapskate is a GOOD word. I couldn’t agree more. Rather than going down the usual money-saving how-to roads, namely the “how to save money by reusing old string and cardboard boxes to make shoes” and the “just …
Mark Boyle
With our current economy a mess, the growing realization that we as a society buy and waste a ton of stuff and the desire for a simpler lifestyle, Boyle’s book and site have garnered immense amounts of attention. By slowly paring down his life, Boyle becomes focused on …
John Lanchester
Lanchester, a Brit and writer by trade, started his research into the current financial debacle as background for a novel he was writing. He soon found a mind-boggling story worth telling without any fictional embellishment. His description of credit markets, hedge-funds, mortgages and other financial toys are remarkably …
Edmund Andrews
New York Times financial reporter Edmund Andrews covers the sad and confusing story of an average American who was taken in by the mortgage industry and s in danger of losing his home – himself. Despite his close and continual study of the American Economy, Andrews found himself …
Paco Underhill
What is wrong with the mall? Well, everything, according to consumer behavior specialist Underhill. And, he adds, the rise and fall of the mall has been almost entirely avoidable. Going through a standard mall visit, Underhill points out the numerous ways malls fail to satisfy the consumer. From …
James Scurlock
Wowza, talk about a 21st century Cassandra! Written as a companion to his movie, Maxed Out, Scurlock includes the stories and data too complex for the big screen. Published in 2007 the book was written in ’05 and ’06. Scurlock saw the storm clouds of predatory lending, easy …
Shira Boss
Not to flog a dead horse or anything… Green with Envy was quoted in House Lust, so I couldn’t resist reading this book too. Boss starts her book with her personal story. She and her unemployed husband worry over bills and try to subsist in New York …
Edited by Jenny Offill and Elissa Shappell
Offill and Shappell edited another book I started a few years ago, The Friend Who Got Away, a collection of stories by women who had “broken up” with a best friend and which I found too depressing to finish. Money Changes Everything…
Rebecca Mead
The short article last fall in Salon on Mead’s book was enough to get me interested in this book. Like being unable to stop staring at a car accident, Mead’s book is grotesquely fascinating. Laying out the modern mania to have the biggest, most extravagant and wedding possible, …
