Book excerpt: Annotation. In this second volume of collected essays, Samuel Alexander develops the provocative ideas contained in Prosperous Descent: Crisis as Opportunity in an Age of Limits. Given that the global economy is in gross ecological overshoot, Alexander argues that the richest nations need to transcend consumer culture and initiate a 'degrowth' process of planned economic contraction. To achieve this, he shows that we need to build a post-capitalist politics and economics from the grassroots up, restructuring our societies to promote a far 'simpler way' of life based on notions of sufficiency, frugality, appropriate technology, and localism.