Avner Offer is Chichele Professor of Economic History at the University of Oxford and Fellow of All Souls College. Prior to his academic career he spent eight years working as a soldier, farmer, and conservation worker in Israel, where he was born and raised. His other books include In Pursuit of the Quality of Life (1996), also published by Oxford University Press, and he has been researching the question of the quality of life in affluent societies since the early 1990s. He is also a Fellow of the British Academy.

• Preface ; 1. Introduction ; PART ONE: EVALUATING AFFLUENCE ; 2. Economic Welfare Measures and Human Well-Being ; 3. Passions and Interests: Self-Control and Well-Being ; 4. Myopic and Rational Choice ; 5. Between the Gift and the Market: The Economy of Regard ; PART TWO: IN THE MARKETPLACE ; 6. The Mask of Intimacy: Advertising and Well-Being ; 7. Epidemics of Abundance: Body-Weight and Self-Control ; 8. Household Appliances and the Use of Time ; 9. The American Automobile Frenzy of the 1950s ; 10. Driving Prudently: American and European ; PART THREE: SELF AND OTHERS ; 11. Affluence and the Pursuit of Status ; 12. Inequality Hurts ; 13. All You Need is Love? Mating since the 1950s ; 14. Women and Children Last: The Ebbing of Commitment ; 15. Conclusion

Avner Offer's latest sparkling and intellectually pugnacious contribution to his protean bibliography represents a tour de force of scholarship and provocative argument... this is an enormously rich and highly penetrating and stimulating study, based on vast and perceptive reading and research. It is also novel in its substance and approach.

Avner Offer is Chichele Professor of Economic History at the University of Oxford and Fellow of All Souls College. Prior to his academic career he spent eight years working as a soldier, farmer, and conservation worker in Israel, where he was born and raised. His other books include In Pursuit of the Quality of Life (1996), also published by Oxford University Press, and he has been researching the question of the quality of life in affluent societies since the early 1990s. He is also a Fellow of the British Academy.

• Preface ; 1. Introduction ; PART ONE: EVALUATING AFFLUENCE ; 2. Economic Welfare Measures and Human Well-Being ; 3. Passions and Interests: Self-Control and Well-Being ; 4. Myopic and Rational Choice ; 5. Between the Gift and the Market: The Economy of Regard ; PART TWO: IN THE MARKETPLACE ; 6. The Mask of Intimacy: Advertising and Well-Being ; 7. Epidemics of Abundance: Body-Weight and Self-Control ; 8. Household Appliances and the Use of Time ; 9. The American Automobile Frenzy of the 1950s ; 10. Driving Prudently: American and European ; PART THREE: SELF AND OTHERS ; 11. Affluence and the Pursuit of Status ; 12. Inequality Hurts ; 13. All You Need is Love? Mating since the 1950s ; 14. Women and Children Last: The Ebbing of Commitment ; 15. Conclusion

Avner Offer's latest sparkling and intellectually pugnacious contribution to his protean bibliography represents a tour de force of scholarship and provocative argument... this is an enormously rich and highly penetrating and stimulating study, based on vast and perceptive reading and research. It is also novel in its substance and approach.

Avner Offer is Chichele Professor of Economic History at the University of Oxford and Fellow of All Souls College. Prior to his academic career he spent eight years working as a soldier, farmer, and conservation worker in Israel, where he was born and raised. His other books include In Pursuit of the Quality of Life (1996), also published by Oxford University Press, and he has been researching the question of the quality of life in affluent societies since the early 1990s. He is also a Fellow of the British Academy.

• Preface ; 1. Introduction ; PART ONE: EVALUATING AFFLUENCE ; 2. Economic Welfare Measures and Human Well-Being ; 3. Passions and Interests: Self-Control and Well-Being ; 4. Myopic and Rational Choice ; 5. Between the Gift and the Market: The Economy of Regard ; PART TWO: IN THE MARKETPLACE ; 6. The Mask of Intimacy: Advertising and Well-Being ; 7. Epidemics of Abundance: Body-Weight and Self-Control ; 8. Household Appliances and the Use of Time ; 9. The American Automobile Frenzy of the 1950s ; 10. Driving Prudently: American and European ; PART THREE: SELF AND OTHERS ; 11. Affluence and the Pursuit of Status ; 12. Inequality Hurts ; 13. All You Need is Love? Mating since the 1950s ; 14. Women and Children Last: The Ebbing of Commitment ; 15. Conclusion

Avner Offer's latest sparkling and intellectually pugnacious contribution to his protean bibliography represents a tour de force of scholarship and provocative argument... this is an enormously rich and highly penetrating and stimulating study, based on vast and perceptive reading and research. It is also novel in its substance and approach.