Crazy Like Us

It is well known that American culture is a dominant force at home and abroad; our exportation of everything from movies to junk food is a well-documented phenomenon. But is it possible America's most troubling impact on the globalizing world has yet to be accounted for? In Crazy Like Us, Ethan Watters reveals that the most devastating consequence of the spread of American culture has not been our golden arches or our bomb craters but our bulldozing of the human psyche itself: We are in the process of homogenizing the way the world goes mad. America has been the world leader in generating new mental health treatments and modern theories of the human psyche. We export our psychopharmaceuticals packaged with the certainty that our biomedical knowledge will relieve the suffering and stigma of mental illness. We categorize disorders, thereby defining mental illness and health, and then parade these seemingly scientific certainties in front of the world. The blowback from these efforts is just now coming to light: It turns out that we have not only been changing the way the world talks about and treats mental illness -- we have been changing the mental illnesses themselves. For millennia, local beliefs in different cultures have shaped the experience of mental illness into endless varieties. Crazy Like Us documents how American interventions have discounted and worked to change those indigenous beliefs, often at a dizzying rate. Over the last decades, mental illnesses popularized in America have been spreading across the globe with the speed of contagious diseases. Watters travels from China to Tanzania to bring home the unsettling conclusion that the virus is us: As we introduce Americanized ways of treating mental illnesses, we are in fact spreading the diseases. In post-tsunami Sri Lanka, Watters reports on the Western trauma counselors who, in their rush to help, inadvertently trampled local expressions of grief, suffering, and healing. In Hong Kong, he retraces the last steps of the teenager whose death sparked an epidemic of the American version of anorexia nervosa. Watters reveals the truth about a multi-million-dollar campaign by one of the world's biggest drug companies to change the Japanese experience of depression -- literally marketing the disease along with the drug. But this book is not just about the damage we've caused in faraway places. Looking at our impact on the psyches of people in other cultures is a gut check, a way of forcing ourselves to take a fresh look at our own beliefs about mental health and healing. When we examine our assumptions from a farther shore, we begin to understand how our own culture constantly shapes and sometimes creates the mental illnesses of our time. By setting aside our role as the world's therapist, we may come to accept that we have as much to learn from other cultures' beliefs about the mind as we have to teach.

Describes the various subcultures trying to reshape America today, and includes interviews with modern bohemians, who share their views on life.

Rufus the fox is up to something-- find out why he's acting so crazy in this clever simile story. All night, he's been sleeping like a log. When the sun rises, he feels as fresh as a daisy. In a story told entirely with similes, Rufus sneaks up and startles his friend Babette, and leads her on a wild chase through the woods. Perfect for teaching figurative language, this brightly-illustrated picture book includes the definition of a simile, as well as a brief introduction to idioms and cliches-- and examples on every page of different sayings and similes. Loreen Leedy's zany illustrations depic the figurative sayings in literal ways-- a wooden fox sleeping like a log, a yellow and black striped sheep who's as mad as a hornet-- to bring home the meanings of the expressions. Perfect for kids studying creative writing, or English language learners who may not be familiar with common but less literal sayings, Crazy Like a Fox will make readers happy as a clam-- and help them incorporate similes into their own writing.

A hilarious and heartbreaking memoir about a mother and son's outlandish odyssey of self-discovery.

A beloved classic returns: S. J. Perelman's own selection of the very best of his hilarious stories and sketches Pulitzer Prize–winning author Joshua Cohen (The Netanyahus) reintroduces America's zaniest humorist to a new generation of readers When asked about himself the writer Sidney Joseph Perelman once quipped, "before they made him, they broke the mold." Nowhere is S. J. Perelman's one-of-a-kind, madcap sensibility—his gift for wordplay, witticism, spoofery, and sheer nonsense—on better display than in his classic collection Crazy Like a Fox, here restored to print for the first time in decades. In a playful, loving tribute to the funny man, novelist Joshua Cohen—also an erudite wordsmith and punster—introduces Perelman’s sui generis comic pieces to a new generation of readers, certain to fall in love with the writer whom The New York Times once noted for his ability “to transform the common cliché or figure of speech into an exploding cigar.” Included here are such beloved classics as: the Joycean virtuoso performance “Scenario” “A Farewell to Omsk,” Perelman's hilarious homage to Dostoevsky and “Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer," his side-splitting send-up of the hardboiled detective fiction of Raymond Chandler Here is Perelman's own selection of the very best of his inimitable humor, restored to print for the first time in decades.

Revised & Updated Edition! God is love. Crazy, relentless, all-powerful love. Have you ever wondered if we're missing it? It's crazy, if you think about it. The God of the universe—the Creator of nitrogen and pine needles, galaxies and E-minor—loves us with a radical, unconditional, self-sacrificing love. And what is our typical response? We go to church, sing songs, and try not to cuss. Whether you've verbalized it yet or not, we all know something's wrong. Does something deep inside your heart long to break free from the status quo? Are you hungry for an authentic faith that addresses the problems of our world with tangible, even radical, solutions? God is calling you to a passionate love relationship with Himself. Because the answer to religious complacency isn't working harder at a list of do's and don'ts—it's falling in love with God. And once you encounter His love, as Francis describes it, you will never be the same. Because when you're wildly in love with someone, it changes everything. Learn more about Crazy Love at www.crazylovebook.com.

The popular indie rock performer describes her battle against the hereditary mental illness that decimated her mother's health and prompted the author to engage in a self-destructive downward spiral before discovering her musical talent.

Enjoying a successful career with his best friend Priss, a destructive friend who helped him escape bullies in childhood, Ian fears for his life when she becomes irrationally angry about Ian's new relationship.