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How to Be Well: Navigating Our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure at a Time Audiobook
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A Kirkus Best Book of 2025
A deeply researched, lively, and personal exploration of the multibillion-dollar wellness industry -- about why women are feeling so un-well and how this trend has shaped our thinking about health and self-care
Peloton. Pilates. Biohacking. Colonics. Ashwagandha. Today, the wellness industry is a $3.7 trillion behemoth that touches us all. In this timely and clear-eyed book, journalist Amy Larocca peels back the layers behind the wellness movement and reckons with its promises and profits. How did we get here and how did the idea of wellness become integrated with women's lives? And how did we end up spending so much money on products that may not work at all?
Amy Larocca takes readers into the communities that swear by their activated charcoal toothpaste and green juice enemas, explaining what each of these practices really is—and what the science says. Larocca holds a magnifying glass to alternative medicine and nouveau lifestyle prescriptions -- and tries a lot herself along the way -- ultimately delivering an assessment of how the wellness industry embodies our (gendered, class-based, racialized) perceptions of care and self-improvement, and how it preys on our unshakable fear of the unknown. She traces the history of how the beauty and fashion industries have peddled snake oil to women for decades—and why we keep coming back for more.
A clear-eyed and honest portrait of the weird world of wellness, How to Be Well lays bare the ways in which the simple notion of caring for oneself has become a seriously big business.
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“Journalist Amy Larocca narrates with quick pacing…Her performance has a street-smart quality that’s not inappropriate, given the aggressive marketing and snake-oil claims proffered by today’s health and beauty marketers…Her journalistic skill is on full display…[and] her excellent research and cultural savvy will make listeners more discerning about what’s essential for good health.”
— AudioFile
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“Larocca does a good job of both explaining the wellness industry and ferreting out its scammier corners.”
— The Atlantic -
“Examines how wellness became less a matter of care and more a marker of status—sold to women as both cure and obligation.”
— Harper’s Bazaar -
“Authoritative and witty, personal without being chummy…She’s honest about the money at stake for the wellness-industrial complex.”
— New York Times -
“Both eye-opening and good fun.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review) -
“As this book demonstrates, there’s always a better version of you for sale…This is the detox many people need from, well, detoxes and their often-detrimental effects.”
— Library Journal (starred review) -
“Penetrating and thought-provoking, this will cause readers to think twice before reaching for the latest purported cure-all.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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About Amy Larocca
Amy Larocca is an award-winning American journalist. She spent twenty years working at New York magazine as both fashion director and editor at large. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Vogue, Town & Country, and the London Review of Books, among other publications.