The Quest of the Simple Life

The author recounts a personal transition from metropolitan life to rural living through a series of essays combining practical counsel and social critique. He contrasts the exhausting, alienating labor and monetary pressures of city existence with the healthful, self-sufficient rhythms of country work, argues for small-scale land ownership and earth-oriented pursuits, and diagnoses the rise of money-hunger replacing earth-hunger. Chapters alternate practical topics — finding and furnishing a cottage, earning a living, neighbourliness, and health economics — with philosophical reflections on happiness, picturesque landscape, and the future of cities, concluding by asking whether the search for simplicity is justified.