From The Boston Globe Book Review
Even when you disagree with Ruppel Shell, you’ll find yourself learning a great deal and enjoying the experience. That’s why “Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture’’ is a first-rate analysis of a consumer culture that has recently been battered by the nation’s severe economic dislocation. Read more.
From Library Journal
This highly intelligent and disturbing book provides invaluable insights into our consumer culture and should be mandatory reading for anyone trying to figure out our current financial mess. As Shell proves, the hunt for cheap products has hurt us all. Highly recommended for
smart readers.
From the Texas Observer
Shell reveals the dizzying connections between price and poverty, using statistics, historical accounts, and scientific and sociological explanations. She spent two years doing research, traveling to Sweden, the birthplace of IKEA, and China, "factory to the world." For its catchy title and relatively few pages, Cheap is a weighty book. Read more.
From USA Today
The book is an engaging exploration of the ways cheapness is making our lives worse. What's more, it conveys how difficult it would be for Americans to abandon their focus on low prices. Reading this book, however, might be a good first step. Read more.
From Salon, Stephanie Zacharek
...in her lively and terrifying book "Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture," Ellen Ruppel Shell pulls back the shimmery, seductive curtain of low-priced goods to reveal their insidious hidden costs. Read more.
From Kirkus Reviews
Diligent, useful cultural criticism, akin to Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and Tom Vanderbilt's Traffic.
From Bookslut, Colleen Mondor
We have been roundly manipulated folks, for our entire lives. And while we all kinda know it, you have to read Cheap to really appreciate it. Staggering stuff.
From the Associated Press
(Shell’s) research was prodigious, and her critique...engaging as it enlightens.
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For media inquiries: Elizabeth Calamari
