American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body's Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life

A Silent Spring for the human body, this wide-ranging, genre-crossing work of narrative nonfiction interweaves the author’s quest to understand the source of her own chronic illness with her telling of the story of the 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 lo...