The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture | 
| Author: Brink Lindsey
Publisher: Collins Business
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 474212
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.3 x 1.1
ISBN: 0060747676
Dewey Decimal Number: 306
EAN: 9780060747671
ASIN: 0060747676
Publication Date: August 1, 2008
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Product Description
Until the 1950s, the struggle to feed, clothe, and employ the nation drove most of American political life. From slavery to the New Deal, political parties organized around economic interests and engaged in fervent debate over the best allocation of agonizingly scarce resources. But with the explosion of the nation's economy in the years after World War II, a new set of needs began to emerge—a search for meaning and self-expression on one side, and a quest for stability and a return to traditional values on the other. In The Age of Abundance, Brink Lindsey offers a bold reinterpretation of the latter half of the twentieth century. In this sweeping history of postwar America, the tumult of racial and gender politics, the rise of the counterculture, and the conservative revolution of the 1980s and 1990s are portrayed in an entirely new light. Readers will learn how and why the contemporary ideologies of left and right emerged in response to the novel challenges of mass prosperity. The political ideas that created the culture wars, however, have now grown obsolete. As the Washington Post aptly summarized Lindsey's take on the contradictions of American politics, "Republicans want to go home to the United States of the 1950s while Democrats want to work there." Struggling to replace today's stale conflicts is a new consensus that mixes the social freedom of the left with the economic freedom of the right into a potentially powerful ethos of libertarianism. The Age of Abundance reveals the secret formula of this remarkable alchemy. The book is a breathtaking reevaluation of our recent past—and will change the way we think about the future.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 A truly new idea.... January 17, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
For someone who closely follows news and politics, reading this book was a refreshing experience. Its central premise is a truly unique idea, in a field filled with redundant writing.
Lindsey's main insight is that both the evangelical revival and the countercultural left arose in response to America's unprecedented prosperity after World War II. Through his libertarian worldview, Lindsey is able to expose the contradictions within each of these movements. The Christian right defends capitalist principles of hard work, delayed gratifcation, and planning for the future -- but condemns the personal freedoms, choices, and lifestyles that are made possible by the new prosperity. In contrast, the countercultural left embraces a more culturally permissive society that emphasizes self-realization -- but condemns the market institutions that create the prosperity that makes this self-realization possible.
Ultimately, Lindsey argues that we must follow a new course that captures the benefits of both the Christian right and the "Aquarian" left. We should firmly embrace capitalism and market institutions, which have produced astonishing growth and prosperity over the last century. But we should also embrace the fruits of this prosperity -- with more time and money than ever before, Americans should be free to choose the lifestyles, religions, products, and experiences that make them happiest. This book argues that we are moving towards a libertarian consensus in the United States that will capture the best of both worlds. This is a highly cogent and persuasive work of history and political science, and I strongly recommend reading it.
 Yep, we're livin' it up, but is it sustainable? October 9, 2007
4 out of 17 found this review helpful
A friend recommended this book to me when he heard some of the other material I was reading, he thought it would be good to see the opposing viewpoint. I agreed and borrowed this from the library. I was skeptical and not expecting much. What I got was even less. All in all this book is a pretentious 400 page op-ed piece whose basic theory is "Americans suffered horribly during the late 19th & early 20th century, now we've outsourced most of our suffering & have convinced ourselves it will only get better, indefinitely. We rule! Perpetual growth forever!". The text is peppered with statistics (mostly on public opinion) but short on substance.
It's not a good sign when the first two sentences of a book's introduction already contain a fundamental (and unquestioned) misconception. Sentence two : "In all prior civilizations and social orders, the vast bulk of humanity had been preoccupied with responding to basic material needs". Before Brink dedicated so much time and effort to this theory perhaps he should have looked a little further back into history than the last few hundred years, for example a study (Original Affluent Society; Marshall Sahlins) of hunter-gatherers concluded that "hunters and gatherers work less than we do; and rather than a continuous travail, the food quest is intermittent, leisure abundant, and there is a greater amount of sleep in the daytime per capita per year than in any other condition of society." They worked an average of four hours a day, assuming they were "working" at all. Their "labor," as it appears to us, was skilled labor which exercised their physical and intellectual capacities; unskilled labor on any large scale, as Sahlins says, is impossible except under industrialism. And the last sentence of back flap of "The Age of Abundance" tells us "[this book] will change the way you think about the future", problem is, Brink doesn't seem to have thought about the future much. He just assumes things will continue on the upward trend indefinitely, in America anyway. That America is the only country that matters is an implication throughout the book, if you were from another planet with no knowledge of world affairs you'd think that child labor and other horrors of the industrial age has disappeared entirely (though you'd wonder how this "abundance" comes about with no more factories). Fact is, more people are hungry and in poverty than ever before in history, but since the author is American & "rational selfishness" is the Randian/Libertarian way, this little detail is irrelevant.
The first couple of chapters focus mainly on how rotten life was during the 19th and early 20th centuries, how huge numbers of Americans lived hand to mouth and suffering was rampant. These chapters along were somewhat interesting and I'd probably rate them as 3-stars alone (they don't contain much smug commentary by Brink which was also a major plus). The rest of the book is pretty much an editorial about the failure of any and all counterculture movements since then and how people have slowly abandoned any and all "romantic" (a favorite word of Brink's, other fun phrases include "lazy pseudo-profundities of unreason") notions in favor of a full embrace of globalization. He doesn't actually analyze the views any of modern society's critics. He prefers simply to mock them, dismissing Limits to Growth as "hysteria" and comparing Al Gore's "hysteria" (yeah, he likes that word too) to the writings of the Unibomber. His flippant dismissal of environmental concerns and complete lack of even any mention of global inequality or our looming energy crisis is enough to dismiss this book as immoral. His narrow focus on America (I don't think China, Southeast Asia, any of the regions from where our physical symbols of prosperity come from are even mentioned in the text) and irrational faith in perpetual growth ('populations & economies have grown exponentially, therefore they will continue to grow exponentially' seems to be his assumption) may not be a product of immorality but genuine ignorance but this doesn't make it excusable. We can appreciate what we've got, all the advances we've made, while still preparing a sustainable future, unfortunately to most politicians discussion of anything other than perpetual exponential growth is taboo. Looks like we're going to have to have some major crises before partisan politicians (and authors) wake up and focus on what's important (solutions) instead of simply finding convenient scapegoats to bash (Russians, "terrorists" and in Brink's case, counterculture hippies). Recommended : The Coming Age of Scarcity: Preventing Mass Death and Genocide in the Twenty-First Century & Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (neither are as cheerless as they sound but they're certainly not as "romantic" as Brink).
A fresh perspective on some familiar history September 30, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Brink Lindsey seems like a really average American guy, which is surprising not because of his unusual name but because he's the Vice President for Research at the libertarian Cato Institute. When so many Libertarians (large L) seem like wackos to most mainstream Americans, Mr. Lindsey does his movement a favor by offering this book. He presents a compelling case that libertarianism (small l) not only makes sense as an ideal for mainstream Americans, but in fact that mainstream America has been moving steadily in that direction since the culture wars of the 60's erupted and left most Americans wondering where all the weirdos -- left and right -- came from. He's much too respectful of both the Aquarians (a useful nomenclature that he seems to have coined) and the Evangelicals to call them "weirdos", but, as is typical of libertarians, he is very comfortable offering criticisms of both movements while at the same time acknowledging the beneficial contributions of both. The book retells the post-WWII history of the United States with some wonderful details added to the stories and personalities most Americans know well. Along the way, he offers his perspective of how mainstream America has adopted most of the libertarian leanings of these two political extremes while rejecting most of the more freedom-reducing elements. It's a refreshing presentation of recent history, and his main argument is compelling and enjoyable to read.
An short adaptation of the book is available online at http://www.reason.com/news/show/120265.html , it offers a decent taste of the book as a whole.
Chronicled Change August 9, 2007
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Provided an excellent explanation of our country's current social and political situation by chronicling how the nation's political center re-balances extremes on the left and right.
Are there "poor" people in America? Not compared to other countries! July 31, 2007
9 out of 19 found this review helpful
Yes it's true, at no other time and place in history than America now has the average person enjoyed so many amenities. So why the doom and gloom pessimism? Politicians want us to think things are bad in order to justify government expansion, that's why. A few decades ago a top USSR reporter and a USA reporter changed places in a "cultural perspective" piece. When the soviet reporter toured some of the worst neighborhoods in the USA in order to do a piece on American poverty, what was his conclusion? That there is no poverty in America! What? No poverty in America? Not really. The average person who lives below the poverty line in America has a refrigerator, a car, air conditioning, a cell phone, a microwave, cable TV and a DVD player. In the average below-poverty household in America people have more square feet per person than the average middle and upper-middle class people in Europe. The average person who lives below the poverty line in America, by the way, is not starving; in fact they eat way more than the average upper-class person and their only danger is that they are more likely to be overweight! So if the man isn't "keeping them down," or whatever other hippy BS slogan you prefer, then what's the deal? Well, consider this: In the USA, right now, the average person who lives below the poverty line spends $2.50 for every $1.00 earned and only works 16 hours a week. That's right, 16 hours a week! If they simply upped that to the standard 40 hours a week this in and of itself would lift most of them above the poverty line! This is not a societal problem; it's a behavioral problem. It's also important to keep in mind however that statistics without context are meaningless. Many people in the "below the poverty line" bracket are actually college kids whose lives are in no way lacking, or are younger people just starting their working life and earning minimum wage. For a long time the town with the greatest number per capita of people living in poverty was an upscale college town! Comparing high income to low income percentages is often confounded with comparing older people's earning power to the earning power of young people. Also, the majority of people in the "uninsured Americans" bracket are actually upper-class citizens who wisely CHOOSE not to have health insurance. (Why pay an insurance company when you can invest and pay yourself?) Only 6% of uninsured Americans are uninsured because they can't afford it, and even then, do they REALLY need cell phones or cable?
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