Books : American Mania : About the Book

LA Times Bestseller

Winner of the 2005 National Book Award
from the National Alliance on Mental Illness

Selected as one of 78 notable ideas in 2005 by the New York Times Magazine (Dec 11, 2005)

2006 Gradiva Award from The National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis

Despite an astonishing appetite for life, more and more Americans are feeling overworked and dissatisfied. In the world’s most affluent nation, epidemic rates of stress, anxiety, depression, obesity and time urgency are now grudgingly accepted as part of everyday existence—they signal the American Dream gone awry. Peter Whybrow, Director of the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA, grounds the extraordinary achievements and excessive consumption of the American nation in an understanding of the biology of human craving and the reward system of the brain—offering for the first time a comprehensive explanation for the addictive mania of consumerism. Whybrow’s analysis combines careful reflection on the roots of American culture as a laissez faire competitive free market economy, with an exploration of the nation’s migrant temperament and its role in the creation of our ambitious, restless society. Taking into account our ancestral biology, he sheds critical light on the dangerous misfit emerging between our consumer-driven culture and the brain systems that evolved to deal with privation 200,000 years ago.  In the absence of any controls—any cultural or economic constraints—we are easily hooked on our acquisitive pleasure seeking behaviors. Whybrow shows how human biology is ill equipped to cope with the demands of the 24/7, global, information-saturated, rapid-fire culture we not only have created, but that we have come to crave. Drawing upon rich scientific case studies and fascinating portraits, American Mania presents a clear and novel vantage point from which to understand the most pressing social and medical issues of our time, and also offers readers an informed approach to addressing these problems in their individual lives.

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©2009 Peter C Whybrow