David Rakoff takes us on a grand tour of the American culture of excess. Whether he is discussing the elegance of one of the last flights of the supersonic Concorde, working as a cabana boy at a South Beach hotel in Miami, or travelling to a private island off the coast of Belize to watch a soft-core video shoot — where he is provided with his very own personal manservant — rarely have greed, vanity, selfishness, and vapidity been so mercilessly skewered.

Somewhere along the line, healthy self-regard has exploded into obliterating narcissism; manic getting and spending have now become celebrated as moral virtues.

Both as a Wildean satire and as a plea for a little human decency, Don’t Get Too Comfortable reveals the extremes to which a devotion to consumer culture can lead.