Some tough love for the consumer society. Much food for thought. ( )

This is one of those paradigm-shifting books. I picked it up thinking I was doing everything I could, living "green" and being aware. But no, I'm a total corporate tool in ways I never dreamed possible.

This is a thoroughly depressing book that opened my eyes to the magnitude of the problems with human trash. I thought I knew how bad things were, but I was laboring under any number of misapprehensions including the one which says "it can be fixed".

I would write a longer review, but I have to go out and blow up some dams now.

( )

Edit 12/28/2009:

I originally gave this book 5 stars with the review below, but after thinking about this book and reading some great reviews online, I feel that I must revise my star rating to be more accurate.

I think Derrick Jensen likes to go for the jugular, going for a radical, blow up all of the dams approach to get people thinking, but ultimately this style of writing does more to depress than inspire. I also hate how he blames women for taking birth control pills (because we're destroying the water supplies, I guess) and then also blames us for having too many babies. Make up your mind, dude!

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Original Review:

An excellent book about the impacts of today's industrial culture. The authors first argue that culture is leading to the ultimate destruction of life on this planet, and then debunk the myths that living "sustainable" lives or buying "eco-friendly" products is the way to go about fixing things.

This book is excellent because it doesn't try to solve the problem of industrial capitalism by telling readers to go out and buy things, or donate to gigantic non-profit organizations.

I also loved how this book was written, with personal anecdotes and lots of stories that really hit home and make the book more readable and enjoyable than a dry academic text.

My only disappointment was that there were no foot-notes, only end-notes, so comments were lost in the back of the book. I hate flipping back and forth to the back of the book, so as a result I read most of the end-notes after the book. I find these to be an integral part of the text, and wish they had been included in the main portion of the book. ( )