Books about Frightening from Amazon.com

"Why does every one of my friends have an eating disorder, or, at the very least, a screwed-up approach to food and fitness?" writes journalist Courtney E. Martin. The new world culture of eating disorders and food and body issues affects virtually all -- not just a rare few -- of today's young women. They are your sisters, friends, and colleagues -- a generation told that they could "be anything," who instead heard that they had to "be everything." Driven by a relentless quest for perfection, they are on the verge of a breakdown, exhausted from overexercising, binging, purging, and depriving themselves to attain an unhealthy ideal.

An emerging new talent, Courtney E. Martin is the voice of a young generation so obsessed with being thin that their consciousness is always focused inward, to the detriment of their careers and relationships. Health and wellness, joy and love have come to seem ancillary compared to the desire for a perfect body. Even though eating disorders first became generally known about twenty-five years ago, they have burgeoned, worsened, become more difficult to treat and more fatal (50 percent of anorexics who do not respond to treatment die within ten years). Consider these statistics:

• Ten million Americans suffer from eating disorders.
• Seventy million people worldwide suffer from eating disorders.
• More than half of American women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five would pre fer to be run over by a truck or die young than be fat.
• More than two-thirds would rather be mean or stupid.
• Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any psychological disease.

In Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, Martin offers original research from the front lines of the eating disorders battlefield. Drawn from more than a hundred interviews with sufferers, psychologists, nutritionists, sociocultural experts, and others, her exposé reveals a new generation of "perfect girls" who are obsessive-compulsive, overachieving, and self-sacrificing in multiple -- and often dangerous -- new ways. Young women are "told over and over again," Martin notes, "that we can be anything. But in those affirmations, assurances, and assertions was a concealed pressure, an unintended message: You are special. You are worth something. But you need to be perfect to live up to that specialness."

With its vivid and often heartbreaking personal stories, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters has the power both to shock and to educate. It is a true call to action and cannot be missed..
Price: $5.75 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Growing up in suburban Detroit, David Hahn was fascinated by science While he was working on his Atomic Energy badge for the Boy Scouts, David’s obsessive attention turned to nuclear energy. Throwing caution to the wind, he plunged into a new project: building a model nuclear reactor in his backyard garden shed.

Posing as a physics professor, David solicited information on reactor design from the U.S. government and from industry experts. Following blueprints he found in an outdated physics textbook, David cobbled together a crude device that threw off toxic levels of radiation. His wholly unsupervised project finally sparked an environmental emergency that put his town’s forty thousand suburbanites at risk. The EPA ended up burying his lab at a radioactive dumpsite in Utah. This offbeat account of ambition and, ultimately, hubris has the narrative energy of a first-rate thriller..
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In The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, George Saunders offers his most boldly imaginative fiction yet.

In a profoundly strange country called Inner Horner, large enough for only one resident at a time, citizens waiting to enter the country fall under the rule of the power-hungry and tyrannical Phil, setting off a chain of injustice and mass hysteria.

An Animal Farm for the 21st century, this is an incendiary political satire of unprecedented imagination, spiky humor, and cautionary appreciation for the hysteric in everyone. Over six years in the writing, and brilliantly and beautifully packaged, this novella is Saunders' first stand-alone, book-length work--and his first book for adults in five years..
Price: $7.26 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Andy Law is the founder and chairman of St Luke's, a successful advertising agency, and one of the most talked-about and studied companies in the world. Described by the prestigious Harvard Business Review as "the most frightening company on earth", and renowned for its innovative (bordering on experimental) management practices and thinking, St Luke's is viewed by many as the company of the future.In this book, Andy Law - himself now elevated to guru status - explains the philosophy and methods behind St Luke's success. This is very much based upon putting personal growth and development ahead of business growth and development. In analysing the success of St Luke's, Law provides points of reflection and a framework for managers and executives from any industry, who are seeking to get the most out of their employees in an age when human resources have become the vital component of nearly every company..
Price: $30.40 [Notify me when price goes down.]

We've nearly all been there--awakened with a pounding heart by frightening scenes that seem real, but were conjured up and existed only in the sleeping mind. Nightmares affect people across countries and cultures, with some 10 percent of the world's population reporting recurrent nightmares. Parents have reported, and science has recorded, nightmares in children as young as 18 months. Up to 40 percent of children aged 2 to 12 experience nightmares, as do some 35 percent of veterans and 50 percent of adults with chronic illness. With this book, a psychologist widely known in his field shows how nightmares evolved and were useful to ancestral populations, and why nightmares may carry beneficial functional effects even today for people who suffer from the pulse-pumping dreams. McNamara brings us up to date on the biology of a nightmare and what, specifically, happens in the brain during the event. He also explains the history and development of nightmares and likely causes, including traumatic events, psychological and physical disorders, and commonly consumed medications. Many examples of nightmares are presented and explained. The content of nightmares is given unusually detailed attention, and the latest science on nightmares is succinctly reviewed. Tables in every chapter summarize existing findings and conclusions on nightmares, and strategies for dealing with nightmares are described. In this novel view, McNamara shows why, rather than being harmful, nightmares can be a helpful adaptive system. The special theme of "spirit possession," which frequently occurs in nightmares, is discussed and related to similar themes in horror movies and horror fiction..
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