A history of unsatisfactory diagnoses
Nicholas Lezard finds Roy Porter's Madness a fascinating and useful assessment of the causes and treatment of mental illness
What the doctor ordered
Is it really possible to pig out on bacon and fried eggs and still look like Catherine Zeta-Jones? William Leith meets Robert Atkins, the world's most successful diet doctor.
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David M Friedman charts the transformation of man's best friend from supernatural phenomenon to leisure accessory in his cultural history of the penis, A Mind of Its Own
My Ab Fab family
In the sitcom inspired by Jessica Howie's mum, Lynne Franks, the daughter Saffy was the sensible one. Real life was a bit different.
Hoist by his own polemic
Steven Pinker's invective against Marxists, feminists and all those who think they can change human minds in The Blank Slate is entertaining, but is it justified?
The book that dare not speak its name
The family is a subject of great passion and drama, so how has Oliver James managed to make it bland in They F*** You Up?
Slim hope
Anorexia, as Kate Chisholm explains in Hungry Hell, has been with us for centuries. So why don't we understand it better?
No way out but burnout
Burnout is ruining the lives of huge numbers of people, many of them still in their twenties. Yet a new theory suggests that a breakdown could turn out to be a breakthrough.
Truth and its consequences
Simon Hattenstone on Sunbathing in the Rain by Gwyneth Lewis - a survivor's recollection of depression
Caring, but little sharing
Elaine Showalter finds that Adam Phillips's essays on the relationship between psychoanalysis and democracy, Equals, are more pithy than persuasive