Self Help, Inc. Makeover Culture in American Life [Paperback]

Why doesn't self-help help? Cultural critic Micki McGee puts forward this paradoxical question as she looks at a world where the market for self-improvement products--books, audiotapes, and extreme makeovers--is exploding, and there seems to be no end in sight. Rather than seeing narcissism at the root of the self-help craze, as others have contended, McGee shows a nation relying on self-help culture for advice on how to cope in an increasingly volatile and competitive work world.Self-Help, Inc.reveals how makeover culture traps Americans in endless cycles of self-invention and overwork as they struggle to stay ahead of a rapidly restructuring economic order. A lucid and fascinating treatment of the modern obsession with work and self-improvement, this lively book will strike a chord with its acute diagnosis of the self-help trap and its sharp suggestions for how we can address the alienating conditions of modern work and family life.

Can readingSelf-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 ofBait and SwitchandNickel and Dimed

Elegantly written, brilliantly argued, and very important--a must read. --Arlie Russell Hochschild, author ofThe Time BindandThe 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 thanló?