In this book, Offer presents a new interpretation of World War I, weaving together the economic and social history of the English-speaking world, the Pacific basin, and Germany, with the development of food production and consumption. In the special field of United States history, Offer shows the effect of American agricultural power on world politics, both before and after World War I. He describes how the social institutions of American agriculture undermined farming in Britain, and forced the British Empire to rely increasingly on overseas imports of food. Detailing the role of agrarian...

Since the 1940s Americans and Britons have come to enjoy an era of rising material abundance. Yet this has been accompanied by a range of social and personal disorders, including family breakdown, addiction, mental instability, crime, obesity, inequality, economic insecurity, and declining trust.
Avner Offer argues that well-being has lagged behind affluence in these societies, because they present an environment in which consistent choices are difficult to achieve over different time ranges and in which the capacity for personal and social commitment is undermined by the flow of novelty....