| 50-5889 | BF575 | 2012-29879 CIP | | Social & Behavioral Sciences Psychology | | Becker, Dana. One nation under stress: the trouble with stress as an idea. Oxford, 2013. 245p index afp; ISBN 9780199742912, $35.00. Reviewed in 2013jun CHOICE. | | The US is a nation of stress, perhaps even the ground zero of stress. Besides occupying private thoughts (“I am so stressed out!”), stress permeates US culture, media, and medicine. According to Becker (social work, Bryn Mawr College), things were not always so: the chief change, and the presenting problem, is that the focus is largely on how individuals adapt to the vagaries of their stressful lifestyles. The elephant in the room is that US society expends little effort on trying to change the structural, social, and economic circumstances that elicit and, worse, perpetuate cycles of individual and collective stress. Becker highlights the curious fact that though stress concepts and applications are ubiquitous, such “stress talk” is also puzzling and limiting. Should professionals identify a child’s first day of kindergarten as “stressful” as compared to, say, the “stressful” events and aftermath of 9/11? Becker’s tart observations in the book’s seven chapters point to more problems than solutions, but perhaps her rhetoric will prompt some sociopolitical realizations and soul-searching regarding how to de-stress collective strains. Summing Up: Recommended. Undergraduates, graduate students, professionals, general readers. — D. S. Dunn, Moravian College |
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