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My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind Hardcover – Deckle Edge, January 7, 2014
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Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Stossel, editor of the Atlantic magazine, is a very nervous man trying awfully hard not to be. “I have since the age of about two been a twitchy bundle of phobias, fears, and neuroses.” He suffers from lots of physical symptoms and a panoply of phobias (most notably, a fear of vomiting). “I’m like Woody Allen trapped in John Calvin,” he confesses. Psychotherapy, multiple medications, and alcohol provide incomplete relief. He ponders the possible causes of panic attacks and anxiety: a strong genetic component, environmental influences, and childhood upbringing. He wonders whether anxiety is purely a psychological problem or something else—a medical disease, spiritual disorder, cultural phenomenon, or evolutionary survival mechanism. For a layperson, he has considerable knowledge about prescription anti-anxiety drugs (perhaps based on three decades of using them). Tying together notions about anxiety culled from history, philosophy, religion, sports, and literature with current neuropsychiatric research and his extensive personal experience, Stossel’s book is more than an astounding autobiography, more than an atlas of anxiety. His deft handling of a delicate topic and frustrating illness highlights the existential dread, embarrassment, and desperation associated with severe anxiety yet allows room for resiliency, hope, and transcendence. Absolutely fearless writing. --Tony Miksanek
From Bookforum
I always used to feel sorry for myself, having suffered four debilitating episodes of clinical depression and many years of moderate-to-severe dysthymia. No longer. In fact, I feel rather fortunate not to be Scott Stossel, editor of The Atlantic, whose lifetime of psychic agony—suffering is too weak a word—is chronicled in excruciating, enthralling detail in My Age of Anxiety. […] Stossell manages to describe the most painful and embarassing experiences in a style that is candid but not melodramatic, heartrending but not self-pitying, wry but not cute. The book is not quite [...] a work of art. But it is an extraordinary literary performance nonetheless. […] In an age inundated by memoirs and psychic self-help books, My Age of Anxiety is the rare memoir that tells an entirely compelling story and the rare self-help book that really helps. You, and many thousands of readers along with you, will laugh until you cry. —George Scialabba
More About the Author
Scott Stossel is the editor of The Atlantic magazine. He is the author of MY AGE OF ANXIETY: FEAR, HOPE, DREAD, AND THE SEARCH FOR PEACE OF MIND and SARGE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SARGENT SHRIVER. His essays and articles have appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The Daily Beast, The American Prospect, and many other publications, and his work has been anthologized in THE BEST AMERICAN POLITICAL WRITING and in various college textbooks. After spending most of his life in the Boston area, he currently lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and two children.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
168 of 176 people found the following review helpful
By
M. JEFFREY MCMAHON
TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on November 22, 2013
Format: Hardcover
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First the good news. In Scott Stossel’s excellent book, he points out a major study that people with generalized anxiety disorder have much higher IQs than the average population’s.
The rest of the news in this very readable book isn’t so good for anxious depressives like Stossel, a lifelong depressive, worry-wart, and multi-phobe, his worst fear being emetophobia, the fear of throwing up.
Stossel exercises a lot of candor discussing his dyspepsia and inner demons as he consults hundreds of sources, firsthand and otherwise, to give us a tour of the many theories behind chronic anxiety with an engaging narrative that reminded me of Eric Weiner’s The Geography of Bliss.
The main philosophical debate is this: Should we embrace our anxiety as part of our existential condition, seeing anxiety as a “calling,” a way of enhancing our life, struggling through the demons, and facing the great meaning of life questions? By muting our anxiety with pharmaceuticals, are we being lazy cowards, relinquishing the great existential quest before us? Or does the pain and suffering from biologically-induced anxiety merit a pharmaceutical solution to give relief to those innocent sufferers?
With fair-minded intensity, Stossel explores this debate and concludes that while he is a lifelong taker of anti-depressants, he overall feels there is an existential purpose to anxiety and shows a lot of research that warns us that pharmaceuticals can be highly addictive, can be hell to go off with severe withdrawals, and only work on one-third of the people who take them with serious side effects.
Interlacing major anxiety research with his own compelling narrative, Scott Stossel has written a masterful account of anxiety and its existential and pharmaceutical challenges. Highly recommended.
The rest of the news in this very readable book isn’t so good for anxious depressives like Stossel, a lifelong depressive, worry-wart, and multi-phobe, his worst fear being emetophobia, the fear of throwing up.
Stossel exercises a lot of candor discussing his dyspepsia and inner demons as he consults hundreds of sources, firsthand and otherwise, to give us a tour of the many theories behind chronic anxiety with an engaging narrative that reminded me of Eric Weiner’s The Geography of Bliss.
The main philosophical debate is this: Should we embrace our anxiety as part of our existential condition, seeing anxiety as a “calling,” a way of enhancing our life, struggling through the demons, and facing the great meaning of life questions? By muting our anxiety with pharmaceuticals, are we being lazy cowards, relinquishing the great existential quest before us? Or does the pain and suffering from biologically-induced anxiety merit a pharmaceutical solution to give relief to those innocent sufferers?
With fair-minded intensity, Stossel explores this debate and concludes that while he is a lifelong taker of anti-depressants, he overall feels there is an existential purpose to anxiety and shows a lot of research that warns us that pharmaceuticals can be highly addictive, can be hell to go off with severe withdrawals, and only work on one-third of the people who take them with serious side effects.
Interlacing major anxiety research with his own compelling narrative, Scott Stossel has written a masterful account of anxiety and its existential and pharmaceutical challenges. Highly recommended.
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64 of 66 people found the following review helpful
By
Joanna
on December 15, 2013
Format: Hardcover
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Who knew that Freud, Darwin, Gandhi and Moses all suffered what could be viewed as anxiety disorders at times? Or that many other great achievers did as well, including Harvard deans and the Atlantic editor who wrote this tome? If you dread public speaking, suffer nervous stomach, obsess over phobias, or hail from a family of worriers, "My Age of Anxiety" might very well make you feel better. The author has been through all of that plus a hundred times more, including losing bowel control at the Kennedy Compound one weekend when he was conducting interviews and getting raw sewage all over their guest bathroom, its rug, and himself. He grew up with a morbid fear of vomiting and, lucky for us readers, exceptional powers of self expression and research. The book chronicles his own life struggles and study of anxiety and is both highly readable and tremendously informative, just like an award-winning Atlantic article on the subject would be.
No matter how much you've read about anxiety, this is likely to offer something more either in the very moving and often stunning personal account or the thoughtful analysis and detail. The book excels in what it covers, mainly the medical model and treatment of anxiety and Mr. Stossel's own hellish experiences. Where it falls somewhat short is in providing enough information on how a man so encumbered by intrusive symptoms and insecurities could manage to excel at Harvard and become a successful editor of a national magazine.
There's also not much on the benefits of exercise, mindfulness meditation, self compassion, or dialectical behavior therapy, and I'd like to see the author delve into these more, as he has other treatments, and report back, both for his own sake and for ours.Read more ›
No matter how much you've read about anxiety, this is likely to offer something more either in the very moving and often stunning personal account or the thoughtful analysis and detail. The book excels in what it covers, mainly the medical model and treatment of anxiety and Mr. Stossel's own hellish experiences. Where it falls somewhat short is in providing enough information on how a man so encumbered by intrusive symptoms and insecurities could manage to excel at Harvard and become a successful editor of a national magazine.
There's also not much on the benefits of exercise, mindfulness meditation, self compassion, or dialectical behavior therapy, and I'd like to see the author delve into these more, as he has other treatments, and report back, both for his own sake and for ours.Read more ›
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82 of 92 people found the following review helpful
By
S. L. Smith
TOP 500 REVIEWER on December 18, 2013
Format: Hardcover
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You do not have to be one of the 40 million Americans* with an anxiety disorder to appreciate Scott Stossel's My Age of Anxiety. Whether or not a reader believes anxiety is worthy of a prized DSM slot and a handshake from Big Pharma, chances are we've all felt its claws at times. Anxiety and stress do seem to be the current Modern Human Condition. (* Source: NIMH dot NIH dot GOV, using US Census data)
Stossel combines survey and memoir so engagingly that I occasionally forgot the topic was how unmanageable anxiety had made his life. I like that his presence throughout the book is not intrusive, or worse, pitiable. He does not overwhelm with dry history and there is no hard lobby for a cause or a position. There is humor and authentic humanity here; most importantly, there is also hope.
In the first few pages, Stossel shares that he has known anxiety since the age of 2. Has anything worked? Surprisingly, no, or at least not for any length of time. And in the last pages, he admits that writing this book is in part self-therapy. In between these auspicious pages Stossel covers:
~ ~ ~ the definitive nature of the beast (Is it an illness? A disorder? A conditioned response?Read more ›
Stossel combines survey and memoir so engagingly that I occasionally forgot the topic was how unmanageable anxiety had made his life. I like that his presence throughout the book is not intrusive, or worse, pitiable. He does not overwhelm with dry history and there is no hard lobby for a cause or a position. There is humor and authentic humanity here; most importantly, there is also hope.
In the first few pages, Stossel shares that he has known anxiety since the age of 2. Has anything worked? Surprisingly, no, or at least not for any length of time. And in the last pages, he admits that writing this book is in part self-therapy. In between these auspicious pages Stossel covers:
~ ~ ~ the definitive nature of the beast (Is it an illness? A disorder? A conditioned response?Read more ›
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