The author recounts his lifelong battle with anxiety, showing the many manifestations of the disorder as well as the countless treatments that have been developed to counteract it, and provides a history of the efforts of scientists, philosophers, and writers to understand this common form of mental illness. He reports on famous individuals who struggled with anxiety, as well as on the afflicted generations of his own family. This portrait of anxiety reveals the anguish it produces, and describes anxiety's human toll, it's crippling impact, its devasting power to paralyze, while at the same time exploring how those who suffer from it find ways to manage and control it. Here the author guides us across the terrain of an affliction that is pervasive (it is the most common form of officially classified mental illness), yet too often misunderstood. -- From book jacket.

Part I. The riddle of anxiety : The nature of anxiety -- What do we talk about when we talk about anxiety -- Part II. A history of my nervous stomach : A rumbling in the belly -- Performance anxiety -- Part III. Drugs : "A sack of enzymes" -- A brief history of panic, or, how drugs created a new disorder -- Medication and the meaning of anxiety -- Part IV. Nurture versus nature : Separation anxiety -- Warriors and worriers : the genetics of anxiety -- Ages of anxiety -- Part V. Redemption and resilience : Redemption -- Resilience.