"Impressively detailed. . . . An authoritative and epic overview."--Publishers Weekly

We live in a profoundly spiritual age, but not in any good way. Huge swaths of American culture are driven by manic spiritual anxiety and relentless supernatural worry. Radicals and traditionalists, liberals and conservatives, together with politicians, artists, environmentalists, followers of food fads, and the chattering classes of television commentators: America is filled with people frantically seeking confirmation of their own essential goodness. We are a nation desperate to stand of the side of morality--to know that we are righteous and dwell in the light. In An Anxious Age, Joseph Bottum offers an account of modern America, presented as a morality tale formed by a collision of spiritual disturbances. And the cause, he claims, is the most significant and least noticed historical fact of the last fifty years: the collapse of the mainline Protestant churches that were the source of social consensus and cultural unity. Our dangerous spiritual anxieties, broken loose from the churches that once contained them, now madden everything in American life. Updating The Protestant Ethic and the Sprit of Capitalism, Max Weber's sociological classic, An Anxious Age undertakes two case studies of contemporary social classes adrift in a nation without the religious understandings that gave them meaning. Looking at the college-educated elite he calls "the Poster Children," Bottum sees the post-Protestant heirs of the old mainline Protestant domination of culture: dutiful descendants who claim the high social position of their Christian ancestors even while they reject their ancestors' Christianity. Turning to the Swallows of Capistrano, the Catholics formed by the pontificate of John Paul II, Bottum evaluates the early victories--and later defeats--of the attempt to substitute Catholicism for the dying mainline voice in public life. Sweeping across American intellectual and cultural history, An Anxious Age traces the course of national religion and warns about the strange angels and even stranger demons with which we now wrestle. Insightful and contrarian, wise and unexpected, An Anxious Age ranks among the great modern accounts of American culture.

Why are we the way we are? Why do some of us find it impossible to calm a quick temper or to shake anxiety? The debate has always been divided between nature and nurture, but as psychology professor Daniel P. Keating demonstrates in Born Anxious, new DNA science points to a third factor that allows us to inherit both the nature and the nurture of previous generations—with significant consequences. Born Anxious introduces a new word into our lexicon: “methylated.” It’s short for “epigenetic methylation,” and it offers insight into behaviors we have all observed but never understood—the boss who goes ballistic at the slightest error; the infant who can’t be calmed; the husband who can’t fall asleep at night. In each case, because of an exposure to environmental adversity in utero or during the first year of life, a key stress system has been welded into the “on” position by the methylation process, predisposing the child’s body to excessive levels of the stress hormone cortisol. The effect: lifelong, unrelenting stress and its consequences–from school failure to nerve-wracking relationships to early death. Early adversity happens in all levels of society but as income gaps widen, social inequality and fear of the future have become the new predators; in Born Anxious, Daniel P. Keating demonstrates how we can finally break the cycle.

From physician and neuroscientist Russell Kennedy, MD comes an award-winning book that offers a revolutionary, life-changing approach to healing anxiety. Break the cycle of anxiety with the newly upgraded and expanded second edition. After years of trying different therapies for his debilitating anxiety without success, Dr. Russell Kennedy had an epiphany: anxiety does not start in the brain. Anxiety starts in the body, where trauma is stored and physical and emotional perception begin. Alarm bells originating in the body are what trigger those anxious thoughts that we call anxiety, and Russ realized that true healing starts only when we learn not to conflate the two. He understood that existing therapies focused only on the mind would never get to the root of the problem—at best, they could help manage symptoms, but they’d never truly heal anxiety. Wanting to make a difference for the millions who suffer from anxiety disorder, Russ created Anxiety Rx, a book that blends his personal story with medical science, neuroscience, and developmental psychology. Readers learn how to sever the connection between the somatic alarm and the flood of anxious thoughts—in the process they begin to heal old trauma and gain a sense of control previously unknown. Russ offers techniques not only for our thinking minds, but for our feeling bodies, changing not just our mindset, but our “body-set.” Unraveling the intricate relationship between anxiety, the body, and the mind, Anxiety Rx offers a profound path toward healing and growth.

Great business leaders possess more than celebrated traits like charisma and an appetite for risk. They have "contextual intelligence"—a profound ability to understand the Zeitgeist of their times and harness it to create successful organizations. Based on a comprehensive Harvard Business School Leadership Initiative study, Anthony J. Mayo and Nitin Nohria present a fascinating collection of stories of the 20th century's greatest leaders, from unsung heroes to legends like Sam Walton and Bill Gates. The book identifies three distinct paths these individuals followed to greatness: entrepreneurial innovation, savvy management, and transformational leadership. Through engaging stories of leaders in each category, the authors show how, by "reading" the context they operated in and embracing the opportunities their times presented, these individuals created, grew, or revitalized outstanding American enterprises. A canon of leadership success from the last century, In Their Time reveals insights for contemporary leaders hoping to build lasting legacies.

An ethnographic study of China’s new elites and their rarified world of debauchery and corruption: “A must have book for China studies” (Choice). This pioneering investigation reveals the private lives—and the nightlives—of the powerful entrepreneurs and managers redefining success and status in the Chinese city of Chengdu. For more than three years, anthropologist John Osburg accompanied wealthy Chinese businessmen as they courted clients, partners, and government officials. Now he invites readers along on his journey through the highly gendered world of luxury karaoke clubs, saunas, and massage parlors—places designed to cater to the desires of elite men. Within these spaces, a masculinization of business is taking place. Osburg details the complex code of behavior that governs businessmen as they go about banqueting, drinking, gambling, bribing, exchanging gifts, and obtaining sexual services. These intricate social networks play a key role in generating business, performing social status, and reconfiguring gender roles. Yet underneath the façade, many entrepreneurs feel trapped by their obligations and moral compromises in this evolving environment. Osburg examines their deep ambivalence about China’s future and their own complicity in the major issues of post-Mao Chinese society—corruption, inequality, materialism, and loss of trust.

The author embarks on a pilgrimage to investigate how the national obessession with happiness infiltrates all areas of life, from religion to parenting, from the workplace to academia. She attends a Landmark Forum self-help course, visits Zappos headquarters in Las Vegas (a "happiness city"), looks into the academic "positive psychology movement" and spends time in Utah with Mormons, officially America's happiest people.