Book of the week: Spend Shift by John Gerzema and Michael D’Antonio

(Jossey-Bass, $25.95)

A majority of Americans have “radically revised” their spending in response to the current recession, said Tara-Nicholle Nelson in The Boston Globe. That was the finding of ad executive John Gerzema when he examined the data in his “extensive, longitudinal study” on American buying behavior. Together with business writer Michael D’Antonio, he then set off on a “post-bubble, coast-to-coast road trip” to get to know these “Spend Shifters” and the changes they’re embracing. The book takes readers from “burned-out Detroit” to “hardscrabble Texas” and “hip Los Angeles,” said Ted Malloch in The Wall Street Journal. Each place is grappling with its own post-recession reality, but a theme emerges: “Certain bedrock virtues—thrift, faith, community, hard work—are enjoying a renaissance.” Americans, this book finds, are no longer “mindless” consumers. The new paradigm is about “voting for values with our dollars,” and about “debit not credit.”

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