The sick society

Oliver James's Affluenza shows how wealth and misery go hand in hand, says William Leith.

Drawn to a happy conclusion

Marisa Acocella Marchetto's cartoon view of her treatment for illness, Cancer Vixen, inspires Stella Duffy.

Schools for sinners

Josh Lacey joins Tobias Jones's search for an alternative community in Utopian Dreams.

An intriguing example showing exemplary cunning

Oliver Burkeman: How To Win Friends And Influence People, the 1936 book that started the modern self-help movement, will be of particular benefit to you if you fall into any of the following categories ...

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.