Do manners really maketh the woman?

Has the world gone to hell in a handbasket? Are 21st-century people little better than club-wielding barbarians? You would certainly think so from the avalanche of books on etiquette filling up our bookshops. In a rare fit of self-improvement, Lucy Mangan spent a week trying to live by their rules.

Slim hopes

Eating disorders can begin as a diet, because of childhood trauma, or just a burning wish to be size zero. They can be a killer - but they can also be overcome. Six young women describe their experience of wasting away and trying to get better.

The hidden assassin

PD Smith is moved by Adam Wishart's study of the history of cancer, inspired by his own father's death, One in Three.

Musings, in other words

Natasha Walter is disappointed by Adam Phillips's discourse on the relationship between psychoanalysis and fiction, Side Effects.

Train your tastebuds

Tom Jaine on Bad Food Britain | The Omnivore's Dilemma | Insatiable: Competitive Eating and the Big Fat American Dream

‘I don’t write to titillate. I censor like crazy to make my blogs less erotic’

Her anonymous sex blog was a runaway success; the book of the blog is a bestseller. But last weekend the true identity of author ‘Abby Lee’ was revealed - and her life was turned upside down. In her first interview, Zoe Margolis talks to Zoe Williams about porn, feminism and breaking the news of her secret writing career to her parents.

Happiness is always a delusion

Our shelves are groaning with books on how to find joy, but psychoanalyst Adam Phillips thinks we are chasing an impossible dream. In fact, sanity involves learning to enjoy conflict, he tells Stuart Jeffries.

Girth of a nation

When Jason Fagone investigates the stomach-churning American love - sorry, the admirable sport - of competitive eating, he shouldn't swallow everything he's told, says Rachel Cooke.