You might like "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid" by Bill Bryson. It's non-fiction, but he's a very insightful and witty writer and talks a lot about the dynamics of his childhood in the Midwest of the fifties in contrast to life in modern America.
I live in a reasonably prosperous suburb of Boston and it seems like we gave up a lot of the vitality in our town centers when we built a large mall on the highway.
Thank you, I will check that book out! I've been looking for similar books, the only other I've found is It by Stephen King.
Yes, I was thinking that Stephen King often captures that childhood essence. Another one to try is "Summer of Night" by Dan Simmons. Funny, because he is another horror writer and it was published the same year as "A Boy's Life." That's also one I would have read almost 30 years ago, so fuzzy on the details, but i remember that I really liked it and for similar reasons as these other books.
To jump back to Bryson, he had some insights that are pretty relevant to Mustachianism, e.g. "By the 1960s, the average American was producing twice as much as only fifteen years before. In theory at least, people could now afford to work a four-hour day, or two-and-a-half-day week, or six-month year and still maintain a standard of living equivalent to that enjoyed by people in 1950 when life was already pretty good - and arguably, in terms of stress and distraction and sense of urgency, in many respects much better. Instead, and almost uniquely among developed nations, Americans took none of the productivity gains in additional leisure. We decided to work and buy and have instead."