Excerpt from SHAM by Steve Salerno, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The bizarre case of Beck Weathers boldfaces the huge question mark that punctuates so much of SHAM doctrine and its myriad applications. The sitcom Seinfeld, in the famous words of its creator and title character, was a "show about nothing." Much the same could be said of SHAM. To a disconcerting degree, it is an $8.56 billion social crusade about nothing. It is a religion whose clerics get very, very rich by stating the obvious in a laughably pontifical fashion. As Anne Wilson Schaef, best known for her book Co-Dependence: Misunderstood–Mistreated, informs us in a later work, Living in Process, "Life is a process. We are a process. The Universe is a process."

To which a cynic might add: Making airy, asinine statements meant to impress or hoodwink gullible people is also a process.

Excerpted from Sham by Steve Salerno Copyright © 2005 by Steve Salerno. Excerpted by permission of Crown, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.