AUGUST 2018 - AudioFile
Sarah Wilson offers an intensely personal and engaging study of anxiety, its history and mythology, its impact on individuals and society, and the ways it can be treated and managed. Her pointedness and vulnerability come through in her narration. As the author blurb notes, Wilson is a journalist, entrepreneur, and NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author, and the founder of IQuitSugar.com. She's accomplished quite a lot in four decades, sometimes in spite of and sometimes inspired by her lifelong struggle with anxiety. Meanwhile, her journey continues. Her voice is crisp (though sometimes her Australian accent requires extra attentiveness), and her tone is confessional, a compelling blend that minimizes any distraction from her meandering storytelling style. A.S. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
03/05/2018
Journalist Wilson (I Quit Sugar) borrows the title of this uplifting, earnest memoir from a Chinese proverb on the theme of acceptance: using one’s anxiety to find purpose, she believes, can make life beautiful. Wilson, one of seven siblings who grew up poor in the Australian bush outside of Canberra, suffered from anxiety for years (as well as from OCD, bipolar disorder, and Hashimoto’s, a disease of the thyroid) and here explores the condition from many angles, meandering, as she explains, “through disciplines and between polemic, didactic and memoir.” In the opening chapter, Wilson asks the Dalai Lama how to stop the internal “fretty chatter that makes us so nervous” (“There’s no use,” he says. “Impossible”). Later, she observes that the “correlation between creative contribution... and anxiety is well documented.” She offers simple tricks and practices throughout the book to reduce anxiety, including making one’s bed every morning and learning to meditate. Wilson also points out that anxiety can have some benefits: anxious folks, for instance, tend to be good planners. Amusing, practical, and filled with delightful asides, this book will appeal to anxiety-prone readers, who will find much to calm them in these pages. Agent: Stacy Testa, Writers House. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
Probably the best book on living with anxiety that I’ve ever read, and I have (unfortunately) read many. Sarah is full of expert advice while remaining grounded and incredibly human. Her vulnerability is her strength. And after reading, it will hopefully be yours too.” — Mark Manson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
“A witty, well-researched, and often insightful book about negotiating a new relationship to anxiety.” — Andrew Solomon, New York Times Bestselling author of Far From the Tree
“Sarah’s life mission is to help us all feel less lonely in our pain. These pages are filled with authenticity and clear direction for how to return to our spiritual truth.” — Gabrielle Bernstein, #1 New York Times bestselling author of May Cause Miracles
“A tremendously entertaining, wise, and effective book on how to walk through anxiety and reclaim life. Sarah’s battle and triumph over anxiety inspires and gives solutions that work. First, We Make the Beast Beautiful resides at the intersection of science and lived-experience. I know of nothing in the same league.” — Xavier Amador, Ph.D., psychologist and founder of the LEAP Institute
“An affecting memoir of coping with anxiety over a busy lifetime. […] Those who endure anxiety will find Wilson’s thoughtful, often funny self-analysis to be just the right companion and affirmation.” — Kirkus
“Uplifting, earnest […] practical, and filled with delightful asides, this book will appeal to anxiety-prone readers, who will find much to calm them in these pages.” — Publishers Weekly
Gabrielle Bernstein
Sarah’s life mission is to help us all feel less lonely in our pain. These pages are filled with authenticity and clear direction for how to return to our spiritual truth.”
Andrew Solomon
A witty, well-researched, and often insightful book about negotiating a new relationship to anxiety.
Mark Manson
Probably the best book on living with anxiety that I’ve ever read, and I have (unfortunately) read many. Sarah is full of expert advice while remaining grounded and incredibly human. Her vulnerability is her strength. And after reading, it will hopefully be yours too.
Xavier Amador
A tremendously entertaining, wise, and effective book on how to walk through anxiety and reclaim life. Sarah’s battle and triumph over anxiety inspires and gives solutions that work. First, We Make the Beast Beautiful resides at the intersection of science and lived-experience. I know of nothing in the same league.”
Dan Buettner
Sarah is a brilliant and agile writer, who takes aim at under-exposed affections, helps us to understand them and shows us path towards a solution. First with sugar addiction and now with anxiety, she curates the latest research and take readers on a journey that will change the way we think about the disease and the people who suffer from it.”
Andrew Soloman
A witty, well-researched, and often insightful book about negotiating a new relationship to anxiety.
Louise Androlia
Thank you Sarah Wilson. This book is a beacon of reality in a sea of avoidance.
Dr. Jodie Lowinger
Sarah’s story provides great insight into what I see people experiencing every day […] She recognizes that the road to wellness is about embracing and living a life aligned to our values.
Aurelio Costarello
“Sarah speaks directly to my heart, articulating her journey in a language that is almost visceral. The words leap from the page and resonate so deeply with me, as they will for anyone who has walked the path of anxiety.
Dr. Mark Cross
I cannot recommend it highly enough. I found the beast indeed to be beautiful.
Professor Patrick McGorry
A nomadic journey, a cri de coeur and a compendium of hard-won wisdom.
Hugh Mackay
Quirky, edgy and brutally frank […] You’ll never read a more searingly honest account of mental illness than this.
Library Journal
11/15/2017
Encountering the ancient Chinese proverb "To conquer a beast, you must first make it beautiful," New York Times best-selling author Wilson decided to beautify her own beast, anxiety, interviewing doctors, the anxiety-prone, and the Dalai Lama. With a 75,000-copy first printing.
AUGUST 2018 - AudioFile
Sarah Wilson offers an intensely personal and engaging study of anxiety, its history and mythology, its impact on individuals and society, and the ways it can be treated and managed. Her pointedness and vulnerability come through in her narration. As the author blurb notes, Wilson is a journalist, entrepreneur, and NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author, and the founder of IQuitSugar.com. She's accomplished quite a lot in four decades, sometimes in spite of and sometimes inspired by her lifelong struggle with anxiety. Meanwhile, her journey continues. Her voice is crisp (though sometimes her Australian accent requires extra attentiveness), and her tone is confessional, a compelling blend that minimizes any distraction from her meandering storytelling style. A.S. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2018-02-20
An affecting memoir of coping with anxiety over a busy lifetime."I am anxious often," writes Australian TV journalist Wilson (I Quit Sugar: Your Complete 8-Week Detox Program and Cookbook, 2014). "But it's kept in check if I don't get anxious about being anxious." In a pleasantly meandering narrative that mixes what the author characterizes as "polemic, didactic and memoir," she ticks off a long list of the many afflictions that she's suffered: depression, hypomania, bipolar disorder, bulimia, insomnia, and, ever since childhood, anxiety. In response to them, she writes, she's tried about everything, from various chemical amelioratives to neurolinguistic programming, Freudian psychotherapy, and even "sand play." All of those illnesses, she avers, were variations on the same theme: anxiety, pure and simple. And she's not alone; even though anxiety wasn't classified as a mental disorder until 1980, as many as 1 in 6 people in the First World suffer from it, and men in particular suffer from anxiety in greater numbers than from depression. The developed-world part is important, since Wilson later wonders whether anxiety may not be a bourgeois sort of problem. In whatever instance, she observes, the whole business is a mess: "Anxiety…it's befuddling and clusterfucky for everyone involved." Having sorted through what she can, the author then looks into various things that she's tried to deploy in order to ward off anxiety, from taking a long walk to trying to declutter a mental lifestyle that, as she memorably puts it, requires us to "keep multiple tabs open in our brains, which sees us toggle back and forth between tasks and commitments and thoughts. And all of it competes. And it clusters. And down we go in a hyper-tabbed tangle." Small wonder that she quietly hints that it may be time to try a few psychedelics.Those who endure anxiety will find Wilson's thoughtful, often funny self-analysis to be just the right companion and affirmation.
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