In his new book, Scott Stossel describes his harrowing experience with clinical anxiety as well as its origins as a psychiatric disease. He looks at the philosophical and biological underpinnings of anxiety and the amazing response from pharmacology, both as a benefit for those who suffer from the illness and as an industry that pathologizes normal emotions upon the arrival of drugs that can alter them.
Most amazing of all is how Scott holds nothing back while not seeming to whine as so many others do in memoirs about personal challenge. Read this book if you’re curious about what can be achieved under extreme stress (albeit stress of its own making). Also read it if you’re looking for compelling narrative nonfiction that blends painstaking research with outstanding storytelling on the subject of an emotion nearly every conscious creature shares—fear.