My age of anxiety

Author: Scott Stossel
Year: 2014
Publisher: Cornerstone Digital
Edition: Kindle

This is not a personal and emotional tale about dealing with anxiety as suggested by the title, but an intellectual tour de force through the philosophical, cultural and medical history of anxiety. A book that doesn't reduce a "psychiatric disease” to a medical problem.

Stossel is incredibly thorough in his search from Aristotle to up to date neuroscience (what he left out, you can find in Richard U´Rens book). Yet, there are a couple of personal issues I would have liked to find out more about.

How did he manage such an outstanding professional career with his infliction (he is the editor of the Atlantic)? How does his wife cope with his anxiety? Where did he put his anger about decades of fruitless therapy? How can you write a book about anxiety and not one time - he must have the journalistic tools - try to evoke the feeling in the reader? In general his descriptions about his bouts of anxiety are more funny than frightening.

Well, I guess there is room for a second volume of a more personal tale.