...Americans have been on an acquisition binge for decades. I suspect television advertising, which made me want a Chatty Cathy doll so much as a kid that when I saw her under the tree my head almost exploded. By contrast, my father will be happy to tell you about the excitement of getting an orange in his stocking during the Depression. The depression before this one....

American journalist and novelist. Born in Philadelphia, Quindlen graduated from Barnard College and immediately began writing for the New York Post. Three years later she moved to the New York Times, where she would eventually win a Pulitzer Prize for the regular column she once described as "taking things personally for a living." These columns have been collected in Living Out Loud (1988) and Thinking Out Loud (1993). After twenty years Quindlen left the Times to devote herself to writing fiction and has since published six novels, including Object Lessons (1991); One True Thing (1994), which was made into a movie in 1998; Black and Blue (1998); Blessings (2002); and Every Last One (2010). How Books Changed My Life (1998) is her memoir about the importance of reading. She currently writes a bi-weekly column for Newsweek. See also annaquindlen.net.