Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Sep 2014
320 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
The Impulse Society is an ambitious, audacious work that gathers together a series of familiar, but seemingly disparate stories into a single master narrative for our troubled times. Central here: how our entire socioeconomic system has become one giant engine devoted to the selfish, short-term impulses of individuals, CEOs and politicians - while ignoring the pressing, long-term needs of society. Combining illuminating analysis with colorful, telling anecdote, Paul Roberts lays out the history and geography of this new social order and charts a clear pathway toward a different and brighter future.
Drawing on the fields of economics, psychology, history and political philosophy, Roberts shows how we have become so obsessed with "maximizing returns" that we embrace virtually any means - any technology, personal tactic, or corporate strategy - that can deliver, regardless of consequences. Corporate executives maximize returns without regard for social impacts. Political leaders score quick points while destroying common ground. Consumers retreat into personalized worlds that render collective action all but impossible. The results: financial volatility, failing health systems, environmental degradation, political paralysis, and a deep and growing society-wide disaffection.
The Impulse Society gives us an indispensable new lens through which to view a world often seen only in fragments. It is a wake up call that may be loud enough, and smart enough, to inspire action.
"Starred Review. Not all doom and gloom, Roberts highlights promising developments such as the Affordable Care Act and growing bipartisan support for campaign finance reform, and offers plausible suggestions for a way forward." - Publishers Weekly
"More worthy of shelving alongside Allan Bloom than Ann Coulter, though still on the pop sociology side of things." - Kirkus
"The Impulse Society will shake up our national conversation the way Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism did four decades ago." - E.J. Dionne, author of Our Divided Political Heart
"Paul Roberts takes the time to reveal how the values and tempo of the marketplace have overtaken those of real life. The Impulse Society is both an apt description of our predicament and a welcome invitation to assert our humanity again." - Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock
"The Impulse Society is a book that taps into a sense that we're all adrift - and finds that technological, economic, and social change has caused us to lose the community that had anchored us. A society that tries to give (and sell) each of us everything we want, Roberts writes, is a society nobody wants." - Evan Soltas, economics columnist for Bloomberg View
"Paul Roberts traces the country's many, disparate ills to the same source: as a nation, we've abandoned the common good. His analysis is smart, provocative, and timely. The Impulse Society compels us to reexamine what it is that we really want." - Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction
"In a brilliant feat of analytic journalism, Roberts shows how American judgment has skewed sharply toward the short-term in everything from political outlook to consumer choices—with devastating consequences for families, communities, and even a sense of national purpose." - Cullen Murphy, author of Are We Rome?, Editor-at-Large, Vanity Fair
"Paul Roberts has written eloquently on very big topics before - but maybe never quite as eloquently, on quite as central a predicament. I guarantee this will jog your thinking, and perhaps put you on a new path." - Bill McKibben, author Wandering Home
"Roberts breaks out of the conventional wisdom about the failure of our leaders to rise above partisan bickering. Instead, he offers a much fresher but no less damning indictment: American politics has become a 'product' to be bought and sold, a way to satisfy immediate partisan or financial impulses rather than a route to collective problem-solving...Agree or disagree, you will be challenged, informed, and provoked." - Jacob S. Hacker, Ph.D., Professor of Political Science, Yale University, and co-author, Winner-Take-All Politics
This information about The Impulse Society was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Paul Roberts is the author of The End of Oil and The End of Food. As a journalist, his writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the New Republic, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in 1999, and for the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award in 2005. Roberts appears regularly on TV and radio. He lives in Washington state.
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