American Bedwetter

Citations, References, and Related Information

Closely related

• Regrets for my Old Dressing Gown by Denis Diderot, 1769. Translation by Mitchell Abidor. A short, delightful read.
• AdBusters. Some of their ideas are a bit left and crunchy granola, but their parodies of advertising are brilliant, funny, and often insightful.
• The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need (Hardcover subtitled: Upscaling, Downshifting, and the New Consumer) by Juliet B. Schor, 1999. Free at the library, or also used (it's not like the words wear out) from BetterWorldBooks.com (hardcover, softcover).
• The Century of Self by Adam Curtis/BBC Four Documentaries, 2002. Film/video, series of 4 episodes totalling 4 hours. The series documents how advances in psychology influence sales/marketing and contribute to our consumerist culture. In all his documentaries, Curtis makes sense out of complex interactions through history, laying out how they all interacted to lead to where we are today.
• A Cluttered Life: Middle Class Abundance from University of California Television. In this video, ethnoanthropologists enter the homes of 32 American families to look at what we own, the way we use space, and how it affects us.

Nominally related

• The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline in Leisure by Juliet B. Schor, 1992. Free from the library, or dirt cheap used (at least as of this writing) from BetterWordBooks.com (hardcover, softcover).
• In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell, 1932. A bit wordy by today's standards, but still only a few pages. Russell argues that since there is a glut of labor, we should cut hours to spread the work around, using the extra time to pursue our passions.

Vaguely related

• Book of the Subgenius, 1987. This is a mind-bending book. I don't know if it's brilliant or complete crap, or possibly completely brilliant crap. But in its nonsense, it invites you to start thinking differently, and being more than a bit skeptical about established ideas.