I'm surprised that this book, which is as about as heavy handed and nuanced as Atlas Shrugged, seems to have such positive consensus. Reading it at a similarly impressionable age I found it to be a typical luddite philosophy presented by a condescending pseudo-intellectual gorilla. It presented some obvious truths about human culture and its effects on the environment, but insidiously twisted everything to support his notion that we have destroyed some grand 'natural' order and need to stop being a culture of 'takers'. Did I mention that to Quinn all cultures are either 'givers' or 'takers'? You can probably guess which one he spent the majority of the book demonizing.