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THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER and SHORTLISTED FOR THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE 2015 As recently as thirty-five years ago, anxiety did not exist as a diagnostic category. Today, it is the most common form of officially classified mental illness. Scott Stossel gracefully guides us across the terrain of an affliction that is pervasive yet too often misunderstood.Drawing on his own long-standing battle with anxiety, Stossel presents an astonishing history, at once intimate and authoritative, of the efforts to understand the condition from medical, cultural, philosophical and experiential perspectives. He ranges from the earliest medical reports of Galen and Hippocrates, through later observations by Robert Burton and Soren Kierkegaard, to the investigations by great nineteenth-century scientists, such as Charles Darwin, William James and Sigmund Freud, as they began to explore its sources and causes, to the latest research by neuroscientists and geneticists. Stossel reports on famous individuals who struggled with anxiety, as well as the afflicted generations of his own family. His portrait of anxiety reveals not only the emotion's myriad manifestations and the anguish it produces, but also the countless psychotherapies, medications and other (often outlandish) treatments that have been developed to counteract it. Stossel vividly depicts anxiety's human toll - its crippling impact, its devastating power to paralyse - while at the same time exploring how those who suffer from it find ways to manage and control it.My Age of Anxiety is learned and empathetic, humorous and inspirational, offering the reader great insight into the biological, cultural and environmental factors that contribute to the affliction.
About the author
Scott Stossel is the editor of
The Atlantic. Previously, he was the executive editor of
The American Prospect. He is also the author of
Sarge: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver. A graduate of Harvard, he lives with his family in Washington DC.
Summary
Guides us across the terrain of an affliction that is pervasive yet too often misunderstood. This book offers the reader an insight into the biological, cultural and environmental factors that contribute to the affliction.
Report
Unflinchingly honest and written in an accessible style...This is a courageous, entertaining and well-researched book about a condition that is thought to currently affect 15 percent if people in the UK. Independent
