"So truthful, bold, clear, candid and convincing that I read it in one breathless sitting" Stephen Fry One night three years ago Josh Roberts went to a party. The next morning he awoke to discover his mind had collapsed. In a matter of days he went from being a fun loving, seemingly successful twenty-something to a hot mess of tears and nerves. Eventually he was diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Since then, he's been mending his mind, rediscovering happiness and learning to live his nervous life. Anxious Man is the story of all this. Told with originality, wit and great humour, it's an essential guide for mental health and a thought-provoking exploration of the millennial condition. *************** "The best book I have ever written" Josh Roberts (debut author of Anxious Man) "Yep, fine" Cali Mackrill (girlfriend of author of Anxious Man) "Have you seen my scissors?" Vicky Roberts (mother of author of Anxious Man)

Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller A People Book of the Week, Book of the Month Club selection, and Best of Fall in Good Housekeeping, PopSugar, The Washington Post, New York Post, Shondaland, CNN, and more! “[A] quirky, big-hearted novel…Wry, wise, and often laugh-out-loud funny, it’s a wholly original story that delivers pure pleasure.” —People From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove comes a charming, poignant novel about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined. Looking at real estate isn’t usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can’t fix their own marriage. There’s a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about to have their first child but can’t seem to agree on anything, from where they want to live to how they met in the first place. Add to the mix an eighty-seven-year-old woman who has lived long enough not to be afraid of someone waving a gun in her face, a flustered but still-ready-to-make-a-deal real estate agent, and a mystery man who has locked himself in the apartment’s only bathroom, and you’ve got the worst group of hostages in the world. Each of them carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them—the bank robber included—desperately crave some sort of rescue. As the authorities and the media surround the premises these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in motion a chain of events so unexpected that even they can hardly explain what happens next. Rich with Fredrik Backman’s “pitch-perfect dialogue and an unparalleled understanding of human nature” (Shelf Awareness), Anxious People is an ingeniously constructed story about the enduring power of friendship, forgiveness, and hope—the things that save us, even in the most anxious times.

In The Atlas of an Anxious Man, Christoph Ransmayr offers a mesmerizing travel diary--a sprawling tale of earthly wonders seen by a wandering eye. This is an exquisite, lyrically told travel story. Translated by Simon Pare, this unique account follows Ransmayr across the globe: from the shadow of Java's volcanoes to the rapids of the Mekong and Danube Rivers, from the drift ice of the Arctic Circle to Himalayan passes, and on to the disenchanted islands of the South Pacific. Ransmayr begins again and again with, "I saw. . ." recounting to the reader the stories of continents, eras, and landscapes of the soul. Like maps, the episodes come together to become a book of the world--one that charts the life and death, happiness and fate of people bound up in images of breathtaking beauty. "One of the German language's most gifted young novelists."--Library Journal, on The Terrors of Ice and Darkness

Universally accessible and employing common visual tropes such as the monochrome and the grid, Johnson's work is also self-referential, making specific allusion to his upbringing in Chicago and the Afro-centric values of his parents. In Rashid Johnson: Anxious Men, the artist creates a site-specific installation in the Drawing Room gallery. The core of the exhibition is a new series of black-soap-and-wax-on-tile portraits that Johnson calls his "anxious men." Executed by digging into a waxy surface, they enact a kind of drawing through erasure and represent the first time Johnson has worked figuratively outside of photography or film, and on such a small scale. Whereas Johnson's previous work has taken a more cerebral approach to questions of race and political identity, the drawn portraits confront the viewer with a visceral immediacy. The portraits are set within a multi-sensory environment that includes wallpaper featuring a photograph of the artist's father from the year Johnson was born, and an audio sound track comprised of Melvin Van Peebles's "Love, That's America," a song that originally appeared in Peebles's 1970 film Watermelon Man and that was recently pressed into service by the Occupy Wall Street movement. In this way, the exhibition, documented in this volume, creates an immersive space that implicates not only the artist but also the viewer in its interrogation of selfhood and identity.

Explores representations of men and masculinity in American fiction published after the Second World WarOffers readings of a wide selection of postwar American novels from 1945 to the mid-1950s, including canonical works, from the unique perspective of their representation of male identityProvides rich comparative insights through analysis of fiction by writers of diverse race, class and sexualityDemonstrates how gender theory generates insights into the constitution of American masculinity in fictionFocusing on a complex and contentious period that was formative in shaping American society and culture in the twentieth century, this book sheds new light on the ways in which fiction engaged with contemporary notions of masculinity. It draws on gender theory and analysis of writers from diverse backgrounds of race, class and sexuality to provide rich comparative insights into the constitution of American masculinity in fiction. The extensive range of novels considered includes fresh analyses of key authors such as James Baldwin, Truman Capote, Patricia Highsmith, Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, Ann Petry, J. D. Salinger and Gore Vidal.

"So truthful, bold, clear, candid and convincing that I read it in one breathless sitting" Stephen Fry One night three years ago Josh Roberts went to a party. The next morning he awoke to discover his mind had collapsed. In a matter of days he went from being a fun loving, seemingly successful twenty-something to a hot mess of tears and nerves. Eventually he was diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Since then, he's been mending his mind, rediscovering happiness and learning to live his nervous life. Anxious Man is the story of all this. Told with originality, wit and great humour, it's an essential guide for mental health and a thought-provoking exploration of the millennial condition. *************** "The best book I have ever written" Josh Roberts (debut author of Anxious Man) "Yep, fine" Cali Mackrill (girlfriend of author of Anxious Man) "Have you seen my scissors?" Vicky Roberts (mother of author of Anxious Man)

Focusing on a complex and contentious period that was formative in shaping American society and culture in the twentieth century, this book sheds new light on the ways in which fiction engaged with contemporary notions of masculinity.