Taking a Hard Look at our Culture of Excess with We Have Met the Enemy by Daniel Akst

Been to the bookstore lately? Just walking in is enough to make you feel like Superman. The rows and rows of diet books and self-help books make me feel like I can do anything. But few of these books about gimmicky diets, de-clutter solutions, and new exercise regimens will do much more than collecting dust in our clutter piles.

This January, reach for a different type of book to inspire the change you crave, a book that gets to the real issues and makes you think about how our society came to be plagued inherit the focus in the hope that we can turn the tide around.

We Have Met the Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess by Daniel Akst is a brilliant yet easy to read book that examines the origins of our biggest problems today: obesity and drug and alcohol abuse.

Akst argues that although we seem to be obsessed with safety "with our helmets and lawsuits and regulations... But as a people, we've embarked on a campaign of slow-motion suicide." Suicide by indulging in all the excesses available to us: food, alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. Akst also argues that if we were to eradicate these excesses, we could radically improve the mortality rate in the US as over a million people die in the US every year as a result of smoking, eating the wrong things, drinking too much, or having high risk sex.

We Have Met the Enemy is filled with interesting observations and conclusions. Akst ties the widespread adoption of microwave ovens to the rapid rise in obesity. But instead of urging housewives to chuck their nukers out the window, he concludes that it is "an apt metaphor for the real story, the plummeting effort and coordination required per calorie ingested."

What keeps this non-fiction book from being dry and dull is the many references to literary and popular characters. Akst weaves in David Duchovny's sex addiction a few paragraphs before quoting John Stuart Mill's definition of character before contrasting the failings of Huck Finn and Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment.

Grab a copy of We Have Met the Enemy at your library or bookstore. You'll take longer to digest it than you would a donut or a full-proof diet plan, but the reward will be that much sweeter.

My review of We Have Met the Enemy is part of a TLC Book Tour. I was provided with a complimentary review copy to write this post.