Living Cheaply With Style: Live Better and Spend Less [Paperback]

Ernest Callenbach (Author)

Book Description

Series: Self-Mastery Series | Publication Date: April 15, 2000

This fun and practical guide offers a huge variety of tips on living for less "with grace, humor, [and] imagination." The author covers a wide range of topics including food, housing, transportation, clothes, and entertainment.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Callenbach, a health and ecological writer in California, aims to show readers how to lead a self-determined, original lifestyle--and to do so frugally. His philosophy is based on three points--environment, health, and money--and he argues that doing something to benefit one of these points will inevitably benefit the other two. Another way of stating his philosophy is "Enough is enough"; more only encumbers. This leads him to recommend a lifestyle that is reminiscent of the counterculture of the 1960s. Callenbach applies this philosophy to every aspect of life: food, finances, car and home ownership, health, employment, and child rearing. The topics covered are wide-ranging but are rarely fully developed; the advice is occasionally suspect but overall sound, if more useful to those living in large cities than other areas. A useful book for past, present, and future flower children.
- Judith M. Nixon, Purdue Univ. Lib., West Lafayette, Ind.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Ronin Publishing; 2nd edition (April 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579510140
• ISBN-13: 978-1579510145
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 5.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,515,725 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nothing new to say..., August 12, 2004

By 

Andi (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Living Cheaply With Style: Live Better and Spend Less (Paperback)

and quite a few stupid things, too, including hitchhiking as a viable transportation method. Many other books will give you much more info than this one. The real goal of this book is in the last chapter (yes, I read it all) - buy less. Buy less because it is better on the Earth, on your budget & on your health. I suggest you save on all of the above and don't buy this book.

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not Exactly Reconnecting with Reality, April 19, 2003

By 

Mamalinde "mamalinde" (Dallas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Living Cheaply With Style: Live Better and Spend Less (Paperback)

I have immensely enjoyed Callenbach's Ecotopia books (part of the weirdness that is Mamalinde?) but found this tome practically useless. Yes, we HAVE become consumer zombies, and a reconnect with reality is necessary and desirable. While I might not embrace the suburban ideal I also have to decline many of Callenbach's ideas: powdered milk, building my own furniture, using a public hospital, going on welfare, scavenging old food at the grocery store, living in a mobile home or a gypsy wagon, and raising bees are not what I consider viable stylishness.

Callenbach's ideas are wildly opinionated (but what did I expect) and way too out there to entice most of the consumer zombies to do anything but laugh. He does say some important things about packaging, advertising, and brand names, as well as the ever insidious "planned obsolescence" consumers buy into with regularity. This is a well thought out and constructed book, but one with little practical value for this user.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Find the older version, September 19, 2006

By 

T. Zeltser (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Living Cheaply With Style: Live Better and Spend Less (Paperback)

I bought this book thinking it would be a new and modern upgrade to the 1990's edition with reference to the internet, more ideas in the modern world type of thing. Well, I was dissappointed, if anything it is a watered down version of my old favorite (the 1990's version is my favorite), the new one is the old one with larger print and fewer pages... Stuff must have been cut out.

I really enjoyed the previous version and would read it for enjoyment and diversion often, but the latest copy 2000, is really bad. I recommend going to a used bookstore and getting the older version.