Vacationing in the British Virgin Islands with his family, magazine editor William Falk found himself longing for a simple life. Gazing across the water, a little island caught his attention. He learned that the population was known for enjoying a carefree lifestyle. Falk decided that's where he wanted to go.

He confessed:

I have no real wants; if anything, my life is too full. "That's precisely the problem," author Gregg Easterbrook says in his new book, The Progress Paradox. Most Americans enjoy a higher standard of living than 99.4 percent of the 80 billion human beings who've ever lived. Yet we're not content. "Our lives are characterized by too much of a good thing." Easterbrook says, "excess at every turn." We're surrounded by so much food that obesity has become a national crisis, are tempted by so much entertainment and information and stuff to buy that we sleep three hours a day less than our grandparents. At times, it leaves you staring at a four-mile-long island on the horizon, wondering what it would be like to chuck it all.