Thanks again to all of you who pre-ordered the new book! It has held the #1 new release badge since last Friday…an essential boost to visibility on Amazon.
Please grab a Kindle or paperback copy if you haven’t. There’s a Kindle sample of Chapters 1-3 on the Amazon site. And please leave a review when you have time!
I was lucky to get some great folks to lend advanced praise -
Johann Hari - author of Lost Connections and just weeks ago - The Magic Pill
Jennifer Breheny Wallace - author of Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic and What We Can Do About It
- recent author of Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family and Social Class
Their support will be critical in converting Amazon browsers (and ad viewers) into purchasers.
Yesterday, I shipped out book mailers to celebrity endorsers to see who will join my literary movement to become more aware of our blind allegiance to an extreme form of individualism fed by our politics, deeply held cultural values and consumer culture.
Unfettered autonomy (civil, political, and economic) sounds great when you’re a teenager trying to break loose from parental constraints. Or when you’re in a highly stigmatized social position - e.g., a Native American woman.
But what happens when something big goes sideways in your life? A marriage. A job. A career. A friendship. A parental relationship. Increasingly, Americans have a tiny circle of people with whom to handle these shocks to identity. And, for many, it is our romantic partner primarily that we ‘expect’ to deal with the emotional brunt of all these shocks.
We simply do not experience life problems as communities anymore because we are divided by age, career, zip code, media habits, and the most modern (and ridiculous) thing of all - lifestyle (a more nuanced way to look at social class than traditional tiers of privilege). Instead, sociologists have revealed that we exist as “networked individuals,” managing little federations of “me.” We must all be special.
And we live in tiny homes of 1-4 people (95%+ of us) where digital devices offer the most enticingly convenient connection.
If my description sounds realistic and infuriating, you will laugh and cry reading my new book. So…please buy it!
And cross your fingers that Oprah likes it!
Coming this Saturday on Homo Imaginari - The 401K Retirement Model’s Dangerous Assumption
Wow. This seems right up my alley
Yeah, I saw this on the #1 spot when I bought it on the Kindle. Was good to see. ^^
So far things are looking really good I'd say, ngl ~ ^^