American Breakdown

A Silent Spring for the human body, this wide-ranging, genre-crossing literary mystery interweaves the author's quest to understand the source of her own condition with her telling of the story of the chronically ill 19th-century diarist Alice James--ultimately uncovering the many hidden health hazards of life in America. When Jennifer Lunden became chronically ill after moving from Canada to Maine, her case was a medical mystery. Just 21, unable to hold a book or stand for a shower, she lost her job and consigned herself to her bed.

The doctor she went to for help told her she was "just depressed. " After suffering from this enigmatic illness for five years, she discovered an unlikely source of hope and healing: a biography of Alice James, the bright, witty, and often bedridden sibling of brothers Henry James, the novelist, and William James, the father of psychology. Alice suffered from a life-shattering illness known as neurasthenia, now often dismissed as a "fashionable illness.

" In this meticulously researched and illuminating debut, Lunden interweaves her own experience with Alice's, exploring the history of medicine and the effects of the industrial revolution and late-stage capitalism to tell a riveting story of how we are a nation struggling--and failing--to be healthy. Although science--and the politics behind its funding--has in many ways let Lunden and millions like her down, in the end science offers a revelation that will change how readers think about the ecosystems of their bodies, their communities, the country, and the planet.