American Mania: When More is Not Enough

by Peter Whybrow (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2006

  $24.84

  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.
  
  American Mania presents a clear and novel vantage point from which to understand the most pressing social issues of our time, while offering an informed approach to refocusing our pursuit of happiness. Drawing upon rich scientific case studies and colorful portraits, this fascinating and important book will change the way you think about American life (Karen Olson, Utne Reader).

• Used

  Hardcover
  2005

  $3.30

  Whybrow describes an affluence in America that far outstrips 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 points to forms of behaviour that are testing the limits of America's ancestral biology--in mind and body--and threaten to erode the very foundations of American community. Drawing upon case studies, Whybrow offers guidance and a vantage point from which to understand America's most pressing social and medical issues. This provocative volume, grounded in science and philosophy, calls for collective action in refocusing the pursuit of happiness and enhancing America's prosperity.