The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less » (Unabridged CD)

John Robbins is the author of the million-copy bestseller Diet for a New America, which became a PBS series. He is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award and the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award and is the founder of the nonprofit organization EarthSave International. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and other publications. He has appeared on many television shows, including The Oprah Winfrey Show. He lives in Soquel, California.
 

From the Hardcover edition.

How do you define the good life? For many, success is measured not by health and happiness but by financial wealth. But such a worldview overlooks the important things in life: personal contentment, family time, spirituality, and the health of the planet and those living on it. A preoccupation with money and possessions is not only unhealthy, it can also drain the true joy from life.

In recent years, millions have watched their American Dreams go up in smoke. The international financial collapse, inflation, massive layoffs, and burgeoning consumer debt have left people in dire financial straits—-including John Robbins, a crusader for planet-friendly food and lifestyle choices, who lost his entire savings in an investment scam. But Robbins soon realized that there was an upside to our collective financial downturn: Curtailed consumerism could lead us to reassess our lives and values.

The New Good Life provides a philosophical and prescriptive path from...

Publishers Weekly

Robbins, best-selling author and heir to the Baskin Robbins family, walked away from a fortune only to lose most of his own money in Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme. As the author of the bestselling Diet for a New America, Robbins championed planet-friendly food and became a popular lecturer, talk-show guest, and feature of the hit documentary, Supersize Me. Now he taps his razor sharp insights and social consciousness to argue that, when it comes to not just our food but also our bank accounts, homes, and other aspects of our lives, bigger is not always best. Chapters like "Eating Better, Spending Less" and "Choosing Where to Live" combine research and case studies with Robbins' own personal experience, redefining our notions of a successful life and lending credibility to his own claims of enlightenment. While we may not choose to live like Thoreau on a remote island (as Robbins did), this examination will make us consider how our consumer choices impact our family and, perhaps, society as a whole. (May)