The main title of this book aptly summarises its subject matter which concerns ‘how Christians should consume’ when they purchase goods in shops or online, how they keep home and prepare food, and what they do with their wealth, if they have any. The book is based on a Ph.D. thesis completed at the University of Virginia, Department of Religion, and is an exercise in public and moral theology. The writer organises a thoughtful book around four themes. The first concerns the avoidance of sin through practices which include charitable giving and spiritual ascesis. Drawing on the evangelical writer, Ronald Sider, Hartman commends a radical practice of charitable giving in which 20 per cent of a professional level income is directly given away for the relief of poverty and related causes. Hartman also considers avoidance of consumption through more active renunciation of wealth, of the kind practised by Francis of Assisi, and notes that there is spiritual healing in renunciation from the lethargy of consumerist indulgence, and the danger of complicity in economic exploitation through consumer acts. Around her second theme, the ‘embrace of creation’, Hartman investigates the potential of a theology of blessing for a positive embrace of the fruits of wealth in celebratory consumption. In critical dialogue with advocates of a ‘prosperity gospel’, Hartman suggests that the meeting of human desires and needs – for food, drink, shelter, companionship – in ways which express delight, gratitude and ‘savour’ affirms creation and that ‘God may desire to bestow wealth on us; as God's beloved children, perhaps we have a right to abundance’ (p. 66). Avoiding idolatry while using creation for physical benefit, even at the cost of some ecological destruction, is not only possible but laudable when consumption involves the enjoyment of God as the Creator who gives good gifts, and when the consumption activity is shared with others. Under her third theme, love of neighbour, Hartman links care of self with care for others in relation to consumption behaviours around food, drink and hospitality. While much of this kind of consumption will be in relation to close friends with whom Christians may share, and for whom they may sacrifice, food and other necessities, Hartman also considers the moral claims of distant others. Love of distant others might be expressed through offering food to a homeless person, but it may also take the form of consideration for those with whom acts of consumption – sellers, producers, distributors – connect the Christian and she cites John Ruskin: ‘consider what condition of existence you cause in the producers of what you buy’. In the fourth theme, ‘to envision the future’, Hartman considers the kinds of rituals – in particular Sabbath keeping and eucharistic eating – through which Christians and others sanctify daily life in such a way as to express transformative eschatological hope. From Sabbath practice Christians learn about community, festival, rest and restraint from excess consumption which prevents others from finding rest. From eucharistic communion Christians learn that all eating is potentially sacramental, and should involve reverence and respect for the earth which sustains all life. It should also inculcate consideration and sacrifice for those who are hungry and lack life's necessities and hence act as another source of restraint on consumption.

Hartman engages a good range of Catholic and Reformed sources including Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assisi, Dorothy Day, Ron Sider and Wendell Berry. The book does however have some notable lacunae, including Christian pioneering of Fair Trade as an alternative to the dominant marketplace approach to consumption of products made by distant others. There is also no rigorous consideration of social and ecological limits to consumption. Nonetheless there is a reflective and conversational quality to Hartman's writing which is engaging and makes this book very readable, and it would work particularly well as a study guide to ‘sustainable consumption’ in a parish reading group.