A powerful sequel to Benjamin R. Barber's best-selling Jihad vs. McWorld, Consumed offers a vivid portrait of an overproducing global economy that targets children as consumers in a market where there are never enough shoppers and where the primary goal is no longer to manufacture goods but needs. To explain how and why this has come about, Barber brings together extensive empirical research with an original theoretical framework for understanding our contemporary predicament. He asserts that in place of the Protestant ethic once associated with capitalism encouraging self-restraint, preparing for the future, protecting and self-sacrificing for children and community, and other characteristics of adulthood we are constantly being seduced into an "infantilist" ethic of consumption.

Benjamin Barber was born in 1939. He studied at the Albert Schweitzer College, the London School of Economics and Political Science, Grinnell College, and Harvard University. He currently holds the Walt Whitman Chair of Political Science at Rutgers University. He is also the Director of the Whitman Center for the Culture and Politics of Democracy. Barber is a noted writer and commentator on the American political scene with such works as An Aristocracy of Everyone, Strong Democracy, and Jihad vs McWorld. In addition to his books, Barber is a frequent contributor to such magazines as The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, and The New York Times. He coauthored the prize-winning, ten-part PBS/CBC television series The Struggle for Democracy. Barber is also a playwright. He has held Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships.