Micki McGee
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195171242
- eISBN:
- 9780199944088
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195171242.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
Why doesn't self-help help? This book puts forward this paradoxical question as it looks at a world where the market for self-improvement products—books, audiotapes, and extreme makeovers—is ...
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Why doesn't self-help help? This book puts forward this paradoxical question as it 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, the author shows a nation relying on self-help culture for advice on how to cope in an increasingly volatile and competitive work world. The book 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 treatment of the modern obsession with work and self-improvement, it 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.Less
Why doesn't self-help help? This book puts forward this paradoxical question as it 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, the author shows a nation relying on self-help culture for advice on how to cope in an increasingly volatile and competitive work world. The book 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 treatment of the modern obsession with work and self-improvement, it 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.
