Description
Trade Review"Can reading Self-Help, Inc. make you rich, successful and perpetually happy? No, but it'll entertain you and make you a whole lot smarter about American popular culture and the economic forces that shape it."--Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Bait and Switch and Nickel and Dimed
"Elegantly written, brilliantly argued, and very important--a must read."--Arlie Russell Hochschild, author of The Time Bind and The Commercialization of Intimate Life
"McGee writes clearly and thoughtfully.... She moves seamlessly from high theory to pop psychobabble, using the former to illustrate the powers of the latter. Overall, she offers a compelling argument for resisting the self-improvement genre's worldview. what comes through most clearly to me is a Marxist critique of consumer capitalism--like Raymond Williams for the 21st century."--Wendy Simonds, American Journal of Sociology
"McGee has revealed the self-help industry as an obsessional treadmill far more than a path to a better life....Self-Help, Inc. offers a revealing look at the profound dissatisfactions that loiter beneath the topography of our consumer culture."--Stuart Ewen, author of PR!: A Social History of Spin
Table of ContentsACKNOWLEDGMENTS ; PROLOGUE COVEYS DAUGHTER AND HER DILEMMA ; INTRODUCTION FROM SELF-MADE TO BELABORED ; APPENDIX SOME NOTES ON METHOD ; NOTES ; BIBLIOGRAPHY
