Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends While the World Saves - Hardcover

"Sheldon Garon is the world's leading historian on household saving, and never has his work been more timely. In Beyond Our Means, he offers outstanding historical scholarship, remarkably engaging reading, and practical insights for addressing our current financial mess."--Michael Sherraden, Washington University in St. Louis

"Beyond Our Means shows that we need more than economics and psychology to determine how societies save and spend. Garon reveals the history of farsighted reformers, politicians, and bankers who actively shaped the norms, incentives, and institutions that turned rising earners into savers. He delivers strong lessons for those who worry about today's overspent America."--Jonathan Morduch, New York University

"Garon's insightful and provocative new book couldn't be more important, and couldn't be more timely. The prosperity of Americans, and America, now depends on creating a nation of savers and investors, and Garon shows us the way by bringing the experience and lessons of nations worldwide right into our hands."--Ray Boshara, senior advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

"This is an important and timely book. It effectively makes the case for viewing savings behavior neither as primarily a cultural trait nor one produced by market forces, but as something fundamentally shaped by policy, politics, and institutions. Beyond Our Means is an uncommon pleasure to read."--Andrew Gordon, author of The Wages of Affluence

"This will be a unique and important book for historians, for policymakers, and for the general public. Beyond Our Means issues an important challenge to cultural explanations that will resonate far beyond the topic of savings. I learned a tremendous amount."--Lawrence B. Glickman, author of Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America