Help!

Under the guise of self-help, a disturbing tribe of gurus has formed; its leaders include Deepak Chopra and, most recently, Rhonda Byrne with her much-ballyhooed The Secret. Do these authors really provide helpful and coherent ideas about dealing with life's issues? In Help!: Debunking the Outrageous Claims of Self-Help Gurus, Paul Damien exposes these authors and other professionals in this field as emperors without clothing. With a devastating combination of humor, satire, and logic, he reveals the vagueness, vapidity, and utter silliness that constitute the work of many prominent self-help authors. Drawing on influences such as Emily Dickinson, Richard Feynman, and Bertrand Russell, Dr. Damien shows that self-help books are about as useful as a root canal on a toothless person.