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

Why doesn't self-helphelp? Millions of people turn to self-improvement when they find that their lives aren't working out quite as they had imagined. The market for self-improvement products--books, audiotapes, life-makeover seminars and regimens of all kinds--is exploding, and there seems to be no end in sight for this trend. InSelf-Help, Inc., cultural critic Micki McGee asks what our seemingly insatiable demand for self-help can tell us about ourselves at the outset of this new century. This lucid and fascinating book reveals how makeover culture traps Americans in endless cycles of self-invention and overwork, and offers suggestions for how we can address the alienating conditions of modern work and family life.


Acknowledgements
Prologue. Covey's Daughter and Her Dilemma
Introduction. From Self-Made to Belabored
1. From Calling to Vision: Spiritual, Secular and Gendered Notions
2. FromPower!toPersonal Power!: Survivalism and the Inward Turn
3. FromHaving It All to Simple Abundance: Gender and the Logic of Diminished Expectations
4. The Self at Work: From Job-Hunters to Artist-Entrepreneurs
5. At Work on the Self: The Making of the Belabored Self
6. All You Can Be, or Some Conclusions
Appendix. Some Notes on Method
Notes
Bibliography

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. --American Journal of Sociology

But credit for coming up with real insight into the self-help juggernaut more properly belongs to Micki McGee, a faculty fellow at New York University and the author ofSelf-Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life.... McGee's grasp of the philosophical underpinnings... is formidable. --Salon

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