Synopses & Reviews
In this startling analysis of our prosperous American society, renowned psychiatrist Peter Whybrow reveals why as a nation of acquisitive migrants our insatiable quest for more now threatens our health and happiness. Whybrow describes an affluence in America that far outstrips our need and a rampant greed spawning the addictions of consumer culture--food, money, and technology. Citing the alarming statistics of obesity, depression, and panic disorders, Whybrow alerts us to a behavior that is now testing the limits of our ancestral biology--in mind and body--and threatens in erode the very foundations of our community. Drawing upon detailed case studies, Whybrow offers compassionate guidance and a novel vantage point from which to understand some of the most pressing social and medical issues of our tune. This provocative volume, grounded in science and philosophy, calls for collective action in refocusing our pursuit of happiness and enhancing America's prosperity.
Synopsis
In this startling analysis of a prosperous American society, renowned psychiatrist Whybrow reveals why, as a nation of acquisitive migrants, people's insatiable quest for "more" now threatens its citizens' health and happiness.
Synopsis
A doctor's bold analysis of the cultural disease that afflicts us all.
Synopsis
Despite an astonishing appetite for life, more and more Americans are feeling overworked and dissatisfied. In the world's most affluent nation, epidemic rates of stress, anxiety, depression, obesity, and time urgency are now grudgingly accepted as part of everyday existence--they signal the American Dream gone awry. Peter C. Whybrow, director of the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA, grounds the extraordinary achievements and excessive consumption of the American nation in an understanding of the biology of the brain's reward system--offering for the first time a comprehensive and physical explanation for the addictive mania of consumerism.
About the Author
Peter C. Whybrow, MD, is director of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles. Born and educated in England, he is the author, among other books, of A Mood Apart and the award-winning American Mania: When More Is Not Enough.