My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind

A "bravely intimate [and] dazzlingly comprehensive" history (The New York Times Book Review) of efforts by scientists, philosophers, and writers to understand anxiety--from an acclaimed journalist with his own longstanding battle with this often misunderstood affliction.

Drawing on his own experience with anxiety, Scott Stossel presents a moving and revelatory account of a condition that affects some 40 million Americans. Stossel offers an intimate and authoritative history. We discover the well-known who have struggled with the condition, as well as the afflicted generations of Stossel's own family. Revealing anxiety's myriad manifestations and the anguish it causes, he also surveys the countless psychotherapies, medications, and often outlandish treatments that have been developed to relieve it.

Stossel vividly depicts anxiety's human toll--its crippling impact, its devastating power to paralyze. He also explores how individual sufferers--including himself--have managed and controlled symptoms. By turns erudite and compassionate, amusing and inspirational, My Age of Anxiety is the essential account of a pervasive affliction.