Member of Generation X or Y: get ready for some bad news. You may see yourself as community-minded, the sort of person who’d organize neighbourhood block parties and do volunteer work if you had
the time. But chances are, you’re more into … well, you.

As a society, it seems, we’re becoming increasingly narcissistic. We’ve grown up feeling pretty unique, and now we’re in the market for a lifestyle built just for us: a notebook computer in our favourite colour; jeans we helped design; a condo, religion, and relationship that speak to who we truly are.

In their gutsy critique of our ballooning egos, Maclean’s writers Steve Maich and Lianne George gather together a collection of research that testifies to our nauseating impatience with everything that doesn’t do us a favour or reflect our individuality. Bowling league? Church picnic? Voting? No thanks. We’d rather check out some handpicked celebrity news on our customized personal computers.

Maich and George walk readers through the development of the Ego Boom (their tag for this rise in individualism) and the You Sell, the all-about-you marketing strategies designed for egotists, tracking the demands for customization and uniqueness in the realms of business, media, politics, religion, housing, and relationships.

It’s a compelling (and familiar) argument: raised in a perfect nest of economic prosperity, a self-esteem movement in schools, praise from parents, and few military or civil conflicts, young people today are self-confident like never before.

At times, Maich and George indulge in some forlorn handwringing over these privileged generations and their self-important tastes – a popular refrain in recent years, not to mention in generations past. This generalized sense of disapproval turns some passages into rants on the pitfalls of youth culture. Young readers of this book should expect to oscillate between pique and gloom.

When it comes to locating the pin with which to pop our swelling collective ego, however, Maich and George are mostly at a loss. Their aim is simply to plant the seed of cynicism in their readers. Yes, the world really does revolve around you. But should it?