An affluence in America far outstrips our need, and a rampant greed spawns the addictions of consumer culture -- food, money, and technology.

Publishers Weekly wrote: The indictment of American society offered here is familiar. What's more idiosyncratic and compelling is the author's grounding his treatise in political economy as well as in neuropsychiatry, primatology and genetics.

Whybrow's analysis of the contemporary rat race is acute.