Self-help books aim to empower their readers and deliver happiness and personal fulfilment but do they really live up to this? This book offers a fresh perspective on self-help culture and popular psychology. Research on this subject matter has generally focused on the USA and other societies in the Global Northwest. In contrast, this book explores the production, circulation and consumption of self-help books from an innovative transnational perspective. Case studies on Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, the People's Republic of China, the United Kingdom and the USA explore the roles which...

This groundbreaking new introduction to sociology is an innovative hybrid textbook and reader. Combining seminal scholarly works, contextual narrative and in-text didactic materials, it presents a rich, layered and comprehensive introduction to the discipline. Its unique approach will help inspire a creative, critical, and analytically sophisticated sociological imagination, making sense of society and the many small and large problems it poses.

This book builds a fresh perspective on therapeutic narratives of intimate life, based on unprecedented empirical research on self-help books in the UK, the USA and Mexico. Exploring narratives of love, intimacy and marriage across a range of self-help literature, Therapeutic Narratives in Popular Culture reconstructs self-help as a transnational cultural phenomenon, charting the production, circulation, and consumption of self-help books at the international level and analysing transnational flows of therapeutic discourses. With close attention to the cultural and political significance of...