The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking in American Culture

By David Emory Shi

Book Overview

From Thomas Jefferson to Lewis Mumford, from Henry David Thoreau to the hippies of the 1960s, advocates of the simple life have formed a diverse tradition in America's cultural history. Here, for the first time, David Shi presents an intriguing and comprehensive study of the many different ways in which Americans have pursued the elusive ideal of plain living and high thinking.
Beginning with the colonial period and the Puritan and Quaker ethic of hard work, temperate living and spiritual devotion, Shi ends with a discussion of Jimmy Carter's and Ronald Reagan's contrasting views of what constitutes the good life. In between we encounter a compelling cast of characters, including Jonathan Edwards, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Scott and Helen Nearing.
In treating the simple life both as a sentimental ideal and as a guide for individual conduct, Shi reveals the intellectual and cultural life of this country and illuminates the persistent desire of select individuals and groups to elevate American life above the material and the mundane.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195040139
• ISBN13: 9780195040135
• Release Date: March 1986
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

the best

On my bookself sits a number of volumes on voluntary simplicity. This one is simply one of the best. It is so good in fact that I am considering giving the other books away. In this history, the author chronicles three centuries of simplicty in America.

A candid, informative, scholarly examination

The Simple Life: Plain Living And High Thinking In American Culture by David E. Shi (President and Professor of History, Furman University) is a candid, informative, scholarly examination throughout American social history of the drive to simplify one's life and find meaning by the means of deliberately giving up excess material vanity, as embodied in the writings and lifestyles of Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, Jimmy Carter, and others. Individual chapters discuss the simple life concept from the Puritan, Quaker, Republican, and other points of view, and the importance and value this way of thought, behavior, and culture retained even in today's increasingly fast-paced electronic world. A thoughtful book, filled with carefully assessed observations, The Simple Life is strongly recommended reading for anyone contemplating simplification of their personal lifestyles and circumstances as a means of improving the quality of their lives and themselves.

Get this book first, if you're interested in simple living.

This is the best book I have ever read on simple living. The writer not only knows his history, but he can write. I especially liked the chapter on Emersonian views of simple living.Richard J. Lorenz