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Oliver James's skill as a writer has captured the essence of an informative and interesting read with an understandable academic content, which makes this book a valuable reference work.

I think this is a good introduction into the concept of affluenza. I think Oliver James' makes good points, especially in childcare and the lack of parenting and just sending children to nurseries at a very young age.
I'm not bothered by the structure...i think some people just need to read something, and stop being so nitpicking. If you dont like it...you dont like it...but it doesn't take away from the concept of Affluenza. Hopefully this will get people into thinking about their life and get them to change aspects of their life.

Having read three Oliver James books now, I begin to detect a pattern. Shaky hypothesis, boosted by hyperbolic journalese, padded from its natural Sunday magazine length by anecdote and repetition.... it's terrible self-regarding tosh. Sorry but it's the truth.

What a ghastly book this is. For the best part of five hundred pages, the author presents a paper-thin thesis supported by conjecture, selective reading of evidence and, if all else fails, mind reading. He does so in a dreadful matey style, and the whole is shot through with sexism, snobbery and unthinking anti-Americanism, topped with a hefty dollop of cultural cringe. Whether it's showing us the jolly, happy Nigerian taxi driver who just loves life despite being beaten up and ripped off, or the stunningly gorgeous Russian girls with their tiny bodies and huge boobs who adore to wear short skirts and tight tops for their own fulfilment rather than to attract men like Western slappers do, or the miffed ex-employee whose account of his former employers' ways somehow finds its place among so-called evidence of the misery of the affluent, the whole thing is so astonishingly bad it's hard to believe it's not an extended parody of the worst kind of intellectually bankrupt handwringing Sunday-supplement trash fluff.

Do you, gentle reader, know what 'utilities' are? Mr James assumes you don't, and kindly gives you a definition. Do you slavishly follow fashion and do the bidding of advertisers? Mr James thinks you probably do. Will you burst with frustration if your car is not new and shiny? Is your life one big lurch between your des-res house, your sparkly motor, Starbucks (witches! devils! burn them!) and your high-pressured, seventy-hours-a-week job as a corporate drone, with nary a thought for your inner soul until you divorce, burn out and get made redundant at thirty-five then spend ten years wondering where the real you went? What? No? What's that you say - you're a complicated human being, not a stereotype? Fret not: it's unlikely you'll ever be interviewed by Mr James.

It's dreadful stuff, it really is. Avoid it. If you want to learn anything about the human condition rather than be hectored by a strange man with a dull agenda and some bizarre notions about how people live, read a good novel instead. Actually, read any novel - you're likely to get more enlightenment from the most trite story than you are from Oliver James's myopic ramblings.

This is a four page Sunday supplement magazine article puffed up into a book. Rather than list it's many weaknesses (from writing style to grasp of history) I'll settle on one. Namely the lenth of skirts women wear in Copenhagen as it's key to one of the author's points.

He claims that he saw very few women with skirts above the knee in Denmark and went on to use this to back up argument that Danish women are resistant to his affluenza virus. Now I happened to be reading the book in Copenhagen and can assure you that many many women wear short skirts and some even ride bikes in them.

A small point you might think but actually key, for once credibility goes it runs like a ladder in tights (which Danish women also wear expressively). So his observation was wrong meaning perhaps that all (or at least some)of his observations might be wrong. Or, worse, his observation was correct because he visited Denmark in Winter and naturally there were fewer women in short skirts and he failed to think this through. So either his observations are not to be trusted, or his ability to handle data is poor. Either way for a book reliant on observations and cultural data this is pretty bad news.

Now about that repetitive writing style did I mention that many women in Denmark wear short skirts....

It's amusing, but slightly unintentionally so. You need compassion and a sense of discipline to preach about this sort of thing. He does it more in pride - comparing himself favourably with his poor subjects. "Now - *I* never do that! I have fun with my children and never never worry about anything." It all sounds rather childish, though likeable, in more than one way - both the sense of irresponsibility and the self-aggrandizement.