"From Puritans and Quakers to Boy Scouts and hippies, our quest for the simple life is an enduring, complex tradition in American culture. Looking across more than three centuries of want and prosperity, war and peace, David E. Shi introduces a rich cast of practitioners and proponents of the simple life, among them Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, Jane Addams, Scott and Helen Nearing, and Jimmy Carter.".

"In the diversity of their aspirations and failings, Shi finds that nothing is simple about our mercurial devotion to the idea of plain living and high thinking. Though we may hedge a bit in practice and are now and then driven by motives no deeper than nostalgia, Shi stresses that the diverse efforts to avoid anxious social striving and compulsive materialism have been essential to the nation's spiritual health."--BOOK JACKET.