Self-Help Nation: The Long Overdue, Entirely Justified, Delightfully Hostile Guide to the Snake-Oil Peddlers Who Are Sapping Our Nation's Soul [Hardcover]

Tom Tiede (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 30, 2001

Every year, Americans waste millions of dollars on books that promise to fix all their problems. We buy each new one, believing its promises despite the failures of all the previous tomes, continuing to hope for that nonexistent magic bullet. Tom Tiede, a former syndicated columnist and the recipient of numerous journalism awards, just might be able to cure us of this addiction. In Self-Help Nation, Tiede skewers the authors of self-help books, whom he compares to modern-day snake-oil peddlers exploiting our weaknesses. As he slashes his way merrily through his least favorite books, Tiede posits a larger cultural argument about why we as a nation have fallen prey to the self-help juggernaut. Waging an eloquent attack on the salaciousness and irresponsibility of the media, the self-absorption of the Baby Boom generation, our fascination with celebrity, and other cultural afflictions, Tiede offers insightful commentary on what we've lost in our hyperaccelerated culture and calls for a return to the timeless American value of self-reliance. In urging us to trust ourselves, Tiede is perhaps writing just another self-help book, a sure sign of the mess we've gotten ourselves into. Regardless, Self-Help Nation is a delight to read-wickedly funny, refreshingly candid, and ultimately profound.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"She's a moralist, a stiff spine, a hanging judge, a smell fungus, a censor, a hall monitor and naturally... [s]he is also largely popular and wealthy. I'll get to hypocritical in a moment," writes Tiede of Dr. Laura Schlessinger. But the good doctor should not feel slighted; Christ himself doesn't come off much better in this mordantly funny attack on sanctimonious advice givers. Taking the view that most people are better off thinking honestly and logically about their own desires, Tiede--a nationally syndicated columnist and recipient of the Ernie Pyle award--massacres self-help books for their quick fixes and, he says, dumbed-down psychology and theology. In his view, they're unnecessary, untrustworthy and even harmful. Along with Dr. Laura and Jesus, Tiede goes after Norman Vincent Peale ("He was the one [at Calgary] wearing bells on his hat, telling everyone to be happy"), M. Scott Peck, Barbara Kessling (Talk Sexy to the One You Love), Elaine Emeth & Dr. Janet Greenhut (Care of Body, Mind and Spirit for Optimal Health) and Paul Harris (Direct Your Subconscious and Drive to Success). Tiede has a pragmatic, no-nonsense approach to life and does not suffer fools gladly. He can be deeply moving, as when he talks about his experiences with disabled servicemen in Vietnam, or starkly terrifying, as when discussing torture in Uganda. His views are not going to be accepted by everyone--he recommends smoking pot--and his rhetoric, while often hilarious, is so strong that it's sure to be ignored by those who might need it most: addicts of self-help.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Dismayed by the chronic dominance of bestseller lists by self-help books? Then welcome Tiede's as a breath of jocose cynicism. Perplexed about how humanity managed to survive in the pre-self-help era, an epoch that stretches back from Norman Vincent Peale to roughly the beginning of time, Tiede contrasts the self-reliant, think-for-yourself attitudes of yore with the placebo-palliatives to personal problems proclaimed by contemporary paperback advisors. Tiede has actually read the scrivenings of the late yet presumably still-hugging Leo Buscaglia; the salesman of eternal good health from New Delhi, Deepak Chopra; and dozens of their psychology-dispensing ilk. Tiede's acidic commentary about the platitude-purveying banality of such authors matches his amazement at the public's gullibility in buying the books. Dieting books, for example, are the book industry's license to print money, though none dare state the duh-solution to obesity: eat less. Tiede's tirade won't dent the sales of self-helpings in spirituality, relationships, or careers, but to the rest of us, who never want to take a step down The Road Less Traveled, his is a devilishly delicious diatribe. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Pr (March 30, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871137771
• ISBN-13: 978-0871137777
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,610,794 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born February 24, 1937 in South Dakota.

Residence. Living with the bears at a tree farm on the James River, in Virginia.

Occupations. National, foreign and war correspondent for NEA, a Scripps-Howard syndicate. Newspaper owner in Georgia. Newspaper publisher in California and Utah. Newspaper editor in Montana, Washington State and North Carolina. Antiquarian book store owner in Virginia; other business ownerships.

Travels. Something in vicinity of two million miles, reporting from nearly 100 countries.

Book publications. Your men At War, a collection of Vietnam columns; Coward, a war novel; Calley, Soldier or Killer?, an account of the My Lai Massacre; Welcome to Washington, Mr. Witherspoon, a novel; The Great American Whale Rescue, an account of a trapped whale in California, 1982; American Tapestry, Eyewitness Accounts of the Twentieth Century; The Man Who Discovered Pluto; Self-Help Nation, a review of America's myopic belief in personal perfection.

Awards. National Headliners Award, for domestic reports; Ernie Pyle Memorial Award, for war coverage; numerous state, regional and private organization awards, including Freedom Foundation's George Washington Medal.

Biography listings. Who's Who In The World (Marquis) since its inception in 1990; Who's Who In America (Marquis) since 1968; others.

Other activities in the arts. Once a member of a board of consultants, Norman Rockwell Museum; painter; lecturer on news and events.

Works and papers collected by the Special Archives Division of Mugar Library at Boston University. The library's Twentieth Century Archives include materials from scores of literary people from around the world.

Present or former member of the Society of Professional Journalists, Overseas Press Club, Senate Press Gallery, White House Press Association; numerous civic organizations.

Mailing address: PO Box 230, Amherst, Va. 24521; e-mail: [e-mail]

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Fifty-fifty, March 8, 2001

By 

Crystal Eitle (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Self-Help Nation: The Long Overdue, Entirely Justified, Delightfully Hostile Guide to the Snake-Oil Peddlers Who Are Sapping Our Nation's Soul (Hardcover)

"Self-Help Nation" opens with a sad story: The author, Tom Tiede, having once been a bookstore owner, is called to a near-empty house to purchase a personal collection. There are hundreds of books, three-quarters of them self-help, almost all "hardcover, rush-out-and-buy first editions." Mr. Tiede estimates the owner spent $12,000 on these books over a period of four years. This hapless man had lost his business, his wife, and finally his home. Had he put that 12 grand toward mortgage payments he would perhaps at least still have his house. Sadder still was the fact that most of the books had bookmarks lodged only 20 or 30 pages in. Such was the catalyst for Tiede's diatribe against the purveyors of self-help and the suckers who buy their books.

One of Tiede's favorite criticisms of self-help books is that they offer "common sense" advice that most of us have known from infancy. But what looks like common sense to him is news to a lot of people; a lot of us have holes in our upbringings, and weren't taught the value of, say, persistence, hard work, developing a strong will or maintaining a positive attitude. If people can learn these things from a book, that may not be such a bad thing.

Tiede comes off as arrogant, and his book is sure to offend many people. There is good and bad in this book in about equal measure, an odd mixture of spite and compassion. Too bad it's impossible to give 2 1/2 stars. For example, he despises the entire Boom generation, but is keenly sympathetic to women and women's concerns. His overall attitude is that humans are flawed, but so what? Our problems aren't as big as they seem, and anyone who tells you otherwise is just trying to sell you something. So what if we get into bad relationships? We learn from them and move on. It's better than, in the quest for perfection, never having a relationship at all.

In the second half of the book Tiede pauses from taking potshots at easy targets to make some pretty good points. One is that the problems addressed by self-help books are pretty inconsequential next to the "invisible, inescapable evilness" rampant in the world, real problems like chronic hunger; child labor; income inequality ("Fifteen percent of the world's people live in the twenty-two nations where the annual income is above $25,000. For everyone else, the average income is $600 a year"); war and the homelessness and statelessness that result; lack of affordable housing in the U.S.; and the billions of dollars spent on arms each year. This is in the chapter called "God's Help?". Tiede reserves a special scorn for quasi-religious self-help books because, to paraphrase, either God is not minding the store or he's on the wrong side. "For many, religious expectation is a tidy way to mislay personal responsibility....reason and goodness work just as well and they are commodities grown on earth."

Ironically, the most enjoyable sections of the book are when Tiede gives advice of his own. "Like sex? Be grateful, undress, lie down, and practice. Don't like sex? Stop fussing, get a hobby [...] and quit wasting other people's time. Undecided? Undress, lie down, and so on...." He also advises readers to smoke pot! drink up! and get mad once in a while!

If you've never cracked the spine of a self-help tome, this book will only confirm your prejudices. If you're the kind of person that thinks "Chicken Soup" and Dr. Laura books are good readin', your feelings might get hurt. If you're an individual who has read some of the small portion of self-help books out there that are actually helpful, you'll know that they promote the same notions that Tom Tiede advocates: self-reliance, critical thinking, kindness, a sense of humor. Whatever the case, you can probably skip this book.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Snake Oil, March 8, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Self-Help Nation: The Long Overdue, Entirely Justified, Delightfully Hostile Guide to the Snake-Oil Peddlers Who Are Sapping Our Nation's Soul (Hardcover)

The world needs a good book calling to task all the charlatans out there getting rich by offering advice on everthing from sex to getting rid of problem dandruff. Unfortunately, Tom Tiede's "Self-Help Nation" is not up to the task. The book is merely a disjointed collection of screeds against everything and everyone ranging from Thomas Jefferson, to Christians to modern newspapers to that always popular target--baby boomers. The book should be entitled, "Tom Tiede's Pet Peeves: a Self-indulgent Monologue." The book's cover promises readers an antidote to the "snake oil peddlers who are sapping our nation's soul." Instead, Tiede simply offers his own brand of snake oil in a package that promises an antidote but contains only colored water.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars really sad, February 27, 2001

By 

yoginimama - See all my reviews

This review is from: Self-Help Nation: The Long Overdue, Entirely Justified, Delightfully Hostile Guide to the Snake-Oil Peddlers Who Are Sapping Our Nation's Soul (Hardcover)

I wanted to like this book. Who wouldn't, with a title like that? But I couldn't get past the first chapter. It's disorganized, almost incoherent, and just plain unpleasant. There *is* a great book waiting to be written about the potential for charlatanism or just plain bungling in the self-help movement....but this isn't it.