On James Howard Kunstler’s Too Much Magic. This short book is, in part, a review and update of his 2005 book, The Long Emergency. It expands his original thesis to include today’s growing economic crisis, with a discussion on the improprieties and illegalities uncovered in the financial sector. He reviews themes of re-localization, walkable cities, food security and the end of “Happy Motoring” that are the subject of his many blog posts at Kunstler.com. His main thesis is that Americans (and this should include much of the industrialized world) live with delusions that technology can solve all our problems and magically carry us forward into an even more complex and technologically advanced future. The fly in the ointment of this utopian dream is energy. Easily accessible oil is running out, and it is becoming prohibitively expensive to acquire the rest. The 300-year cheap oil “fiesta”, as Kunstler calls our modern age, is coming to an end and with it our way of living. Utopia, after all, has to run on something. In particular his last three chapters summarizes the most recent climate change science and serve as a helpful primer for anyone seeking an understanding of where we are and how we got here (in terms of peak oil and global warming). He provides in these chapters a scathing examination of modern, Western culture (drawing on American examples that are becoming universal). For example, he humorously describes Americans’ addiction to fast foods and sugar as akin to “nutritional masturbation”, a typical example of his razor-sharp wit. He ends with reminders of what are the truly lasting things in life—home, work, friendship and community—and what social changes might occur as we leave behind a world of too much magic and enter the long emergency of peak oil and climate change. I recommend this book to anyone interested in peak oil and climate change and what an energy-constrained future may have in store for us. Don