Abstract

286 BOOK REVIEWS Kathy Hamilton University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK kathy.hamilton@strath.ac.uk © 2016 Kathy Hamilton https://doi.org/10.1080/10253866.2016.1195095 The vice of luxury: economic excess in a consumer age, by David Cloutier, Washington, DC, Georgetown University Press, 2015, 315 pp., $59.95 (hardcover), ISBN 9781626162709, $32.95 (paperback), ISBN 9781626162563 The Vice of Luxury is a must read for people who are dissatisfied with what they possess. Instead of seeking for more, and more satisfying consumption, this book suggests limiting and voluntary reduction of consumption on the basis of simple arguments: Are more or more luxurious products really more satisfying? How many material things do we actually really need? What is enough and what is too much? The book constitutes a profound critique on the American consumerist society and begins with US president Carter’s speech who, faced with the oil crisis in the 1970s, warned of materialism, egoism and self-interest, born out of a mistaken idea of freedom and the right to live a good life. Americans chose Reagans path: “I find nothing wrong with the American people.” Affluent society was taken for granted. Today, markets have – again – become stages for moral debates, fuelled by critical, post-capitalist thinking and disruptive economic developments