Undoing Perpetual Stress: The Missing Connection Between Depression, Anxiety, and 21st Century Illness. by Richard O'Connor, Ph.D.

I think this is an important book.

Using up-to-date research results to back up his thesis, in this book Richard O'Connor shows that modern American society is full of stress, supplied by a vicious cycle of expectation and shortfall, and the result is a variety of psychological and physiological illnesses. While this is not news, O'Connor makes a coherent synthesis of a lot of the latest research and thinking to present the problem.

Once the problem has been articulated, the bulk of the book starts. The basic skill he propounds is mindfullness, a way of using the mind to observe the mind, calmly and uncritically, to learn to see where thoughts originate and to learn to feel emotions. He then goes on to discuss a large number of stress-related problems, and ways of handling the effects.

If this is a self-help book, it is an uncommonly sympathetic one. If it is a social commentary, it is a direct one.

Something that I concerns me about this book is the implicit assumption that before industrialisation these stress-related illnesses were absent or much less common. I'd like to see some kind of work examining this

Waiting for the Galactic Bus by Parke Godwin

A science fiction novel about two members of a highly advanced species who get left behind on a far-out little planet after a party, and then messes with the brains of the primates. They get to handle the fall-out.

A Song of Sixpence by AJ Cronin

A story of a boy of an Irish immigrant family growing up as a Catholic in Protestant Scotland. His parents marriage estranged them from their families. When the father, who was doing well in the baking industry, dies of consumption, the son and mother becomes dependent on the Irish in-laws. Only hard work and recovery from deep disappointments keep them from falling into disrepute. A well-written story with vivid characters from the view-point of an innocent boy.