by Ethan Watters
Free Press
3/22/2011, paperback
SKU: 9781416587095
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.
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?
American-style depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anorexia have begun to spread around the world like contagions, and the virus is us. Traveling from Hong Kong to Sri Lanka to Zanzibar to Japan, acclaimed journalist Ethan Watters witnesses firsthand how Western healers often steamroll indigenous expressions of mental health and madness and replace them with our own. In teaching the rest of the world to think like us, we have been homogenizing the way the world goes mad.
Reviews:
"In crisp journalistic style, Watters argues convincingly that what the American psychiatric industry exports is not so much drugs as diseases." --"Mother Jones"
"Ethan Watters has a truly original take on the way our country shapes the expression of mental illness around the globe. His is one of those books you can't stop thinking about or referring to in conversation, that permanently changes your perspective on beliefs you took for granted." -- Peggy Orenstein, author of "Waiting for Daisy"
About the Author:
Ethan Watters is the author of Urban Tribes, an examination of the mores of the never-marrieds, and the coauthor of Making Monsters, a groundbreaking indictment of the recovered memory movement. A frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Discover, Men's Journal, Wired, and This American Life, he lives in San Francisco with his wife and children.