To live on Earth as an American today while knowing what this way of living does to Earth requires at least one of the following mental acts: denial, forgetting, indifference, hope. Mania is a novel about one mind’s attempt to carry on in the absence of such acts. This novel recounts an environmentalist’s accidental foray into the advertising industry. Confronted there with the true nature of capitalism, it can no longer turn away from the inherent contradiction between the American way of life and life itself. The cognitive dissonance borne by this experience pushes the mind to its breaking point.