{"product_id":"b0b93y3d91","title":"American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body’s Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life – An Illuminating Investigation into Chronic Illness and Environmental Ecosystems","description":"\u003cp\u003eA  Silent Spring  for the human body, this wide-ranging, genre-crossing literary mystery interweaves the author’s quest to understand the source of her own condition with her telling of the story of the chronically ill 19th-century diarist Alice James—ultimately uncovering the many hidden health hazards of life in America.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhen Jennifer Lunden became chronically ill after moving from Canada to Maine, her case was a medical mystery. Just 21, unable to hold a book or stand for a shower, she lost her job and consigned herself to her bed. The doctor she went to for help told her she was “just depressed.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAfter suffering from this enigmatic illness for five years, she discovered an unlikely source of hope and healing: a biography of Alice James, the bright, witty, and often bedridden sibling of brothers Henry James, the novelist, and William James, the father of psychology. Alice suffered from a life-shattering illness known as neurasthenia, now often dismissed as a “fashionable illness.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn this meticulously researched and illuminating debut, Lunden interweaves her own experience with Alice’s, exploring the history of medicine and the effects of the industrial revolution and late-stage capitalism to tell a riveting story of how we are a nation struggling—and failing—to be healthy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAlthough science—and the politics behind its funding—has in many ways let Lunden and millions like her down, in the end science offers a revelation that will change how readers think about the ecosystems of their bodies, their communities, the country, and the planet.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"ANT","offers":[{"title":"Ebook","offer_id":54223459025259,"sku":"YSL24277","price":8.39,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0978\/1674\/0203\/files\/81iic58e1tL._SY1500.jpg?v=1792816371","url":"https:\/\/www.booktavero.com\/products\/b0b93y3d91","provider":"BookTavero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}