Books about Consuming from Amazon.com

Based on two highly acclaimed PBS documentaries watched by 10 million viewers, Affluenza uses the whimsical metaphor of a disease to tackle a very serious subject: the damage done — to our health, our families, our communities, and our environment — by the obsessive quest for material gain. In cleverly titled chapters like "Swollen Expectations" and "A Rash of Bankruptcies," the authors examine the origins, evolution, and symptoms of the affluenza epidemic. Yet they also explore cures and suggest strategies for rebuilding families and communities and for restoring and respecting the earth.

Demonstrating that now, more than ever, Americans need ways of fighting the affliction, this edition includes a new introduction and updated figures, adds information on the impacts of stress and overwork, and provides an in-depth look at various campaigns and movements offering solutions for today's problems. Engaging, fast-paced, and accessible, it reexamines a serious, far-reaching issue for a wide audience..
Price: $9.70 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Is your daily grind taking the joy out of life? Don't get glum--get a hobby!

In this entertaining, information-packed guide, journalist and ReadyMade contributing editor Tina Barseghian invites you to explore 101 thoroughly absorbing diversions, from conventional to downright wacky, that'll satisfy every taste, talent, and timetable. The bonus: Practicing a hobby boosts your all-around mental and physical health, as longtime family practitioner Dr. Miguel Figueroa reveals in the Foreword.

Are you an independent, nature-loving, outdoorsy type? Consider beachcombing, caving, or mushroom hunting. Crafty, meticulous, and patient? You might enjoy needlework, knotting, or growing bonsai. Just take the personality quiz to identify those hobbies that best match your aptitude, interests, and even your mood, then it's on to the hobbies. Each hobby entry provides a playful mix of information: overviews, histories, and sample projects to help you get your hobby on, plus profiles of dedicated hobbyists and resources that'll help take you to the next level. Get a Hobby! might just be the inspiration you've been looking for.

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Price: $5.75 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The average American child sees about 40,000 television commercials every year. Companies target younger viewers all the time, selling everything from sugar cereals to minivans, and cross-promotional marketing influences everything from the food stocked in school vending machines to the characters who appear in children’s books. Kids are requesting specific brands as soon as they can talk. American corporations spend over $15 billion yearly on marketing to children in an effort to cultivate nagging, insatiable, “cradle-to-grave” consumers.

In this shocking and engrossing exposé, psychologist Susan Linn reveals how the marketing industry preys on kids from the day they’re born, exploiting their vulnerabilities and skewing their values in order to influence what they eat, wear, and play with. This advertising blitz stifles creativity and exacerbates obesity, eating disorders, violence, sexual precocity, and substance abuse. Linn—a mother herself—recognizes that parents alone are no match for the marketing experts. What they need is the concerted help of healthcare professionals, educators, and legislators who have children’s best interests in mind. Consuming Kidsis a call to action for anyone who cares about the well-being of children..
Price: $7.96 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Ten years after its original publication, Death by Chocolate remains the ultimate chocolate dessert cookbook. It won the James Beard Award, inspired a television show, and has sold over 100,000 copies. All of the original mouth-watering recipes remain, now supplemented by many new recipes carefully crafted by master-chef Marcel Desaulniers. All preparations and ingredients are included with full-color photographs, allowing mere mortals to create chocolate masterpieces such as the eponymous Death by Chocolate, Chocolate Temptation, and Chocolate Dementia.
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Price: $21.35 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Required reading for anyone interested in how style and the power of image dominate every aspect of our lives. A special millennium edition of the 1988 classic with a compelling new forward by the author.

When All Consuming Images first appeared ten years ago, it quickly established itself as a classic in the field of American visual culture, with its textured historical analysis and lucid discussion of the power of style in contemporary society. All Consuming Images has profoundly influenced the fields of art, architecture, and graphic design, insightfully exploring how a sensibility for style has shaped the consumerist culture in which we live.

In his new introduction, Ewen scrutinizes the social thought that brought the image to prominence as a primary tool of public address, and presents revealing new autobiographical testimonies which illuminate the problematic place that images occupy in young peoples sense of themselves and their world..
Price: $8.92 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A New York Times bestseller with over a half-million copies in print, CHOCOLATE continues to delight chocoholics everywhere Packed with Boynton's famous hippos, bunnies, pigs, and other animals, this gift-perfect book is a whimsical commentary on the individual's relationship to chocolate, its varieties, and its sources.

From the several sorts of chocolate connoisseur-including the gourmoo, who eats only milk chocolate-to the several shapes of chocolate itself (bunny, kiss, glove compartment bar), Boynton's apologia for chocolate misses nothing. Myths are debunked: chocolate is not fattening, she argues, especially when the caloric expenditure of carrying it home from the store and hiding it from company is factored in. Directions are supplied: to remove stains, lick them. Plus, how to grow chocolate at home, a foolproof method for determining if chocolate is in season (does the name of the month contain the letter A, E, or U?), and a recipe for Hippo Pot de Mousse.

"Fourteen out of ten people like chocolate," says the artist. This is the only guide for people who like chocolate the way they like to breathe. Vanilla people, keep out. Selection of the Literary Guild.

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Price: $7.90 [Notify me when price goes down.]

All is grist for Miller's mill, which is to demonstrate the significance of this seismic cultural shift for theological method, doctrine, belief, community, and theological anthropology. "Consuming Religion" takes a critical stand against the deleterious effects of consumerism, but it also strives to consider certain positive aspects of the transformation of religious faith and practice that have accompanied the rise of consumer culture, aspects such as the explosive growth of popular agency..
Price: $15.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]