The High Price of Materialism

Tim Kasser's MIT Press research is one of the more quietly important books in the well-being space — a decade of cross-cultural empirical work showing that chasing wealth and status actively undermines happiness and health. Choice Magazine named it an Outstanding Academic Book and the argument is still cited regularly in positive psychology. It does get a bit repetitive in the second half, but the core finding is solid and the writing is accessible enough for a motivated general reader.