Publishers Weekly
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In this underwhelming follow-up to The Minimalist Home, Becker advocates for adopting minimalism as a way to overcome the everyday distractions that drain people’s lives of “meaning, purpose, and satisfaction.” The “personal, societal, and cultural distractions” Becker decries consist of the usual suspects: money, possessions, technology, and fear. Transcending them, he argues, requires embracing the minimalist ethos: essentially, doing better by having less. Becker hits his stride when observing that one best serves others when one best serves oneself, because “we remove distractions so we can live our best lives of contribution to others.” This service-oriented approach buoys a book otherwise bogged down by overreliance on cliché (“Having more money isn’t the secret to having more happiness”) and the author’s frequently unfortunate choices, such as likening technology users to heroin addicts and calling rumination “the enslavement of the past.” A few pearls of wisdom shine, but readers might not find the hunt worth the effort. (Apr.)