Jasper Fforde
Three separate interviews in which Jasper Fforde discusses the Thursday Next series, his Nursery Crime novels and Shades of Grey, the first in a trilogy set in a future world recognizable as our own - but only just.
Abraham Verghese
An interview with Abraham Verghese about his life and writing and in particular about his extraordinary 2009 novel Cutting for Stone, set in 1960s and '70s Ethiopia and 1980s New York.
Martha A Sandweiss
An interview with Martha Sandweiss in which she discusses her book Passing Strange, a biography of Clarence King who lived a double life—as the celebrated white explorer, geologist, and writer Clarence King and as a black Pullman porter named James Todd, married to Ada with whom he had five children.
Amy Greene
Amy Greene talks about her first novel, Bloodroot, which brings her native Appalachia—and the faith and fury of its people—to rich and vivid life.
Self-help: To millions of Americans it seems like a godsend. To many others it
seems like a joke. But as investigative reporter Steve Salerno reveals in this
groundbreaking book, it's neither—in fact it's much worse than a joke. Going
deep inside the Self-Help and Actualization Movement (fittingly, the words form
the acronym SHAM), Salerno offers the first serious exposé of this
multibillion-dollar industry and the real damage it is doing—not just to its
paying customers, but to all of American society.
Based on the author's extensive reporting—and the inside look at the industry he
got while working at a leading "lifestyle" publisher—SHAM shows how
thinly credentialed "experts" now dispense advice on everything from mental
health to relationships to diet to personal finance to business strategy.
Americans spend upward of $8 billion every year on self-help programs and
products. And those staggering financial costs are actually the least of our
worries.
SHAM demonstrates how the self-help movement's core philosophies have
infected virtually every aspect of American life—the home, the workplace, the
schools, and more. And Salerno exposes the downside of being uplifted, showing
how the "empowering" message that dominates self-help today proves just as
damaging as the blame-shifting rhetoric of self-help's "Recovery" movement.
SHAM also reveals:
How self-help gurus conduct extensive market research to reach the same
customers over and over—without ever helping them.
The inside story on the most notorious gurus—from Dr. Phil to Dr. Laura, from
Tony Robbins to John Gray.
How your company might be wasting money on motivational speakers, "executive
coaches," and other quick fixes that often hurt quality, productivity, and
morale.
How the Recovery movement has eradicated notions of personal responsibility by
labeling just about anything—from drug abuse to "sex addiction" to shoplifting—a
dysfunction or disease.
How Americans blindly accept that twelve-step programs offer the only hope of
treating addiction, when in fact these programs can do more harm than good.
How the self-help movement inspired the disastrous emphasis on self-esteem in
our schools.
How self-help rhetoric has pushed people away from proven medical treatments
by persuading them that they can cure themselves through sheer application of
will.
As Salerno shows, to describe self-help as a waste of time and money vastly
understates its collateral damage. And with SHAM, the self-help industry
has finally been called to account for the damage it has done.
Book Reviews
Library Journal - Lynne F Maxwell
[His] conclusion would have been much more persuasive if he had dispensed with the vitriol. Wendy Kaminer's I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help Fashions is a more effective critique.
Booklist - Ray Olson
A wonderfully lucid, angeringly cogent polemic.
Publishers Weekly
In addition to detailing the raw facts, Salerno excels at pinpointing the self-abnegating strategy the self-help industry employs: namely, tearing you down in the name of building you up. And the positivity yields questionable results in any case. The self-help industry should not be dismissed as "silly but benign," says Salerno, and he documents how it has undermined psychology, education and health care in this blistering critique.
Greg Critser, author of Fat Land
Funny, naughty, and wise, Steve Salerno's SHAM is the must-read antidote to Dr. Phil, Tony Robbins, and the whole cracked pot of American pop psychology.
Dr. Michael Hurd, author of Effective Therapy
In an age of self-help, why are so many Americans helpless? Why do so many
self-help gurus, from Dr. Phil on down, create followers rather than independent
souls? Steve Salerno exposes the SHAM with ruthless honesty destined to make more than a few people angry.
Named for a flower whose blood-red sap possesses the power both to heal and poison, Bloodroot is a stunning fiction debut about the legacies—of magic and madness, faith and secrets, passion and loss—that haunt one family across the generations, from the Great Depression to today.
Samara Taylor used to believe in miracles. But her mother is in rehab, and her father seems more interested in his congregation than his family. And when a young girl in her small town is kidnapped, her already-worn thread of faith begins to unravel.
When she's not digging up bones or other ancient objects, quirky, tart-tongued archaeologist Ruth Galloway lives happily alone in Norfolk. But when a child's bones are found on a desolate beach nearby, and Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson calls Galloway for help, Ruth finds herself in...
Few works of literature are as universally beloved as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Now, in this spellbinding historical novel, we meet the young girl whose bright spirit sent her on an unforgettable trip down the rabbit hole –and the grown woman whose story is no less...
The Coral Thief, as riveting and beautifully rendered as Ghostwalk, Rebecca Stott’s first novel, is a provocative and tantalizing mix of history, philosophy, and suspense. It conjures up vividly both the feats of Napoleon and the accomplishments of those working without fame or...
I rarely read anything before this. Years ago I picked this one up and couldn't put it down. It changed me into a book nut. It was a wonderful ...
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I can't believe I waited so long to read this book. Shame on me. This book was wonderful, lyrical, entertaining - all the makings of a wonderful ...
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The book held so much for the reader but in the end I felt robbed. The evolution of Trudy was disturbing and somewhat insulting. She came across as ...
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Justice Department still has issues with Google Settlement(Feb 05 2010) The Department of Justice dealt a serious blow Thursday evening to the chances that the Google Book Search settlement will gain court approval later this...
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Hachette formally adopts 'agency model'(Feb 05 2010) Hachette Book Group USA became the second major U.S. publisher to officially announce its intention to move to an agency model for the sale of e-books....
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SHAM
Library Journal - Lynne F Maxwell
Greg Critser, author of Fat Land
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