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Acknowledgments Dessie wishes to thank, and Adam to acknowledge, those who facilitated previous exposures of the ideas expressed in this book. Chapter 3, “What’s Wrong with Materialism?” had a selective viewing in PAE News, no. 15, September 4, 2002. Chapter 4, “Humanism: The Value of Persons,” borrows heavily from Robert Lane’s talk at a conference in County Clare, Ireland, in 2000, published as “Putting People at the Centre of Things” in Rede‹ning Roles and Relationships, ed. Harry Bohan and Gerard Kennedy (Dublin: Veritas, 2001), 131–62. Chapter 6, “Diminishing Returns to Happiness,” borrows from Robert Lane, “Diminishing Returns to Income, Companionship—and Happiness,” Journal of Happiness Studies 1 (2000): 103–19. And Chapter 8, “Getting Rich the Right Way,” borrows from Robert Lane’s talk on “Third World Transition: Through Materialism to Humanism,” presented at the Conference on Consumption and Society,” University of Costa Rica, March 12–13, 2002. Both Dessie and Adam are deeply grateful for the skill and generosity of Neva Goodwin, economist and codirector of the Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University. She transcended the limits of her discipline and enhanced the coherence of this book. She is a truly great humanist. Three institutions gave shelter and stimulation to the author while he wrote this little book: Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies; Nuf‹eld College, Oxford; and the Whitney Center, Hamden, Connecticut . Although Adam has reservations, Dessie would like to thank his namesake for the license to pursue serious matters in a lighthearted manner . He says, I saw how ordinary men were corrupted by opinions of the most foolish kind in every walk of life. I longed to ‹nd a remedy more than I hoped for success. And then I believed I had found a means whereby I could insinuate myself into those over-indulged souls and cure them by giving them pleasure. I had often observed how a gay and amusing form of advice like this had happy results in many cases. (Desiderius Erasmus, “Letter to Dorp” (1515) on the publication of In Praise of Folly) Acknowledgments xii ...

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