Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer

by Barbara Ehrenreich Narrated by Joyce Bean

Overview

From the celebrated author of Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich explores how we are killing ourselves to live longer, not better.

A razor-sharp polemic which offers an entirely new understanding of our bodies, ourselves, and our place in the universe, Natural Causes describes how we over-prepare and worry way too much about what is inevitable. One by one, Ehrenreich topples the shibboleths that guide our attempts to live a long, healthy life -- from the importance of preventive medical screenings to the concepts of wellness and mindfulness, from dietary fads to fitness culture.
But Natural Causes goes deeper -- into the fundamental unreliability of our bodies and even our "mind-bodies," to use the fashionable term. Starting with the mysterious and seldom-acknowledged tendency of our own immune cells to promote deadly cancers, Ehrenreich looks into the cellular basis of aging, and shows how little control we actually have over it. We tend to believe we have agency over our bodies, our minds, and even over the manner of our deaths. But the latest science shows that the microscopic subunits of our bodies make their own "decisions," and not always in our favor.

We may buy expensive anti-aging products or cosmetic surgery, get preventive screenings and eat more kale, or throw ourselves into meditation and spirituality. But all these things offer only the illusion of control. How to live well, even joyously, while accepting our mortality -- that is the vitally important philosophical challenge of this book.

Drawing on varied sources, from personal experience and sociological trends to pop culture and current scientific literature, Natural Causes examines the ways in which we obsess over death, our bodies, and our health. Both funny and caustic, Ehrenreich then tackles the seemingly unsolvable problem of how we might better prepare ourselves for the end -- while still reveling in the lives that remain to us.

Editorial Reviews

APRIL 2018 - AudioFile

Narrator Joyce Bean strikes just the right blend of prickly and wry humor for Barbara Ehrenreich’s polemic countering a number of sacred cows in health care. Ehrenreich rails against over-testing, the unclear benefits of mindfulness, and workplace wellness programs that cause stress rather than good health. Employing the twin lenses of class and cellular biology, she rejects the argument that individuals can control their health. Bean’s delivery is clear, energetic, and appropriately unsentimental but with an underlying tone of irony and absurdity that provides levity. It all matches Ehrenreich perfectly. Ehrenreich asserts that she is now old enough to die and so is done with annual physicals and will seek medical care only to treat symptoms. Of course, there are millions of Americans who lack access to medical care at the same time that others are overtreated. A.B. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

The New York Times - Parul Sehgal

Ehrenreich has called herself a "mythbuster by trade." In previous books, she's assailed the positive-thinking movement…and gone undercover to investigate low-wage work in the era of welfare reform…and middle-class job insecurity. The wellness movement, as you might imagine, doesn't stand a chance. She fillets it with ease and relish—revealing the paucity of research supporting the usefulness of everything from annual physical exams to meditation—and dismantles nostrums about the innate balance and wisdom of the body…Natural Causes is peevish, tender and deeply, distinctively odd—and often redeemed by its oddness…The pleasures of her prose are often local, in the animated language, especially where scientific descriptions are concerned. Her description of cells rushing to staunch a wound is so full of wonder and delight that it recalls Italo Calvino.

Publishers Weekly

12/18/2017
Claiming to be “old enough to die,” feminist scholar Ehrenreich (Living with a Wild God) takes on the task of investigating America’s peculiar approach to aging, health, and wellness. She comes down hard on what she describes as “medicalized life”: the unending series of doctor’s visits, fads in wellness, and preventative-care screenings that can dominate the life of an aging person. Ehrenreich’s core philosophy holds that aging people have the right to determine their quality of life and may choose to forgo painful and generally ineffective treatments. She presents evidence that such tests as annual physicals and Pap smears have little effect in prolonging life; investigates wellness trends, including mindfulness meditation; and questions the doctrine of a harmonious “mindbody” and its supposed natural tendency to prolong life. Contra the latter, she demonstrates persuasively that the body itself can play a role in nurturing cancer and advancing aging. Ehrenreich remains skeptical and scientifically rigorous throughout her inquiry, a combination she attributes to her time in the women’s health movement and her doctorate in cellular immunology. That this knowledgable book arrives in the context of an urgent American healthcare crisis, when many people can’t access or afford healthcare, may irritate some readers. Still, Ehrenreich’s sharp intelligence and graceful prose make this book largely pleasurable reading. Agent: Kristine Dahl, Curtis Brown. (Apr.)

From the Publisher

"Ehrenreich's sharp and fearless take on mortality privileges joy over juice fasts and argues that, regardless of how many hours we spend in the gym, death wins out. An incisive, clear-eyed polemic, NATURAL CAUSESrelaxes into the realization that the grim reaper is considerably less grim than a life spent in terror of a fate that awaits us all."
—p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #454545}Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Evicted

"...[A] provocative, informative, hilarious, and deeply moving book. A must read."—Arlie Hochschild, New York Times bestselling author of Strangers in their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

"Throughout the text, [Ehrenreich] employs the erudition that earned her degree, the social consciousness that has long informed her writing, and the compassion that endears her to her many fans...A powerful text that floods the mind with illumination-and with agonizing questions."—Kirkus (starred review)

"[Ehrenreich] offers a healthy dose of reformist philosophy combined with her trademark investigative journalism. In assessing our quest for a longer, healthier life, Ehrenreich provides a contemplative vision of an active, engaged health care that goes far beyond the physical restraints of the body and into the realm of metaphysical possibilities."—Booklist

"Barbara Ehrenreich is a singular voice of sanity amid our national obsession with wellness and longevity. She is deeply well-informed about contemporary medical practices and their shortcomings, but she wears her learning lightly. NATURAL CAUSES is a delightful as well as an enlightening read. No one who cares about living (or dying) well can afford to miss it."—Jackson Lears, PhD, Editor in Chief of the Raritan Quarterly Review

"This book is joyous. It is neither anti-medicine nor anti-prevention; it is pro-balance, pro-scepticism and pro-perspective. Paradoxically, Natural Causes is about hope. If you are struggling with choices that weigh hope in potential medical advances that damage quality of life against non-treatment and the acceptance of a terminal diagnosis, this may not offer much comfort, but...as with so many of Ehrenreich's books, NATURAL CAUSES is a much-needed tonic."—The Guardian

"'Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the earth,' promised Archimedes. In Natural Causes, Barbara Ehrenreich has achieved an Archimedean feat. Her lever is made of erudition, acuity and irreverence; her place to stand is the perspective of cultural criticism; and she has turned the current understanding of body and self upon its head. To read this book is a relief: at last, what needed to be said!"—Jessica Riskin, author of The Restless Clock: A History of the Centuries-Long Argument over What Makes Living Things Tickp.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 27.0px; font: 21.0px Arial; color: #111111; -webkit-text-stroke: #111111; background-color: #ffffff}span.s1 {font-kerning: none}

Claiming to be 'old enough to die,' feminist scholar Ehrenreich (Living with a Wild God) takes on the task of investigating America's peculiar approach to aging, health, and wellness...Ehrenreich's sharp intelligence and graceful prose make this book largely pleasurable reading."—Publishers Weekly

"...[R]ichly layered with evidence, stories and quotations...and sprinkled with barbed humor. Ehrenreich lets nobody off the hook, skewering Silicon Valley meditators and misogynist obstetricians with equal vigor. It's impossible to read this book without questioning the popular wisdom about the body and its upkeep. At the very least, you'll be able to make better decisions about how to work out, whether to have that mammogram and when to just order the steak."—BookPage

"[Ehrenreich's] description of cells rushing to staunch a wound is so full of wonder and delight that it recalls Italo Calvino...She sits in contemplation of death itself in the book's concluding, very beautiful passages, bringing to it her characteristic curiosity and awe at the natural world."—The New York Times

"Ehrenreich proves a fascinating guide to the science suggesting that our cells, like the macrophages that sometimes destroy and sometimes defend, can act unpredictably and yet not randomly."—The Atlantic

"[Ehrenreich] is one of our great iconoclasts, lucid, thought-provoking and instructive, never more so than here."—Blake Morrison, The Guardian

"Informative, provocative and entertaining."—The Times

"'Wham bam, thank you, ma'am' might be one response to this polemical, wry, hilarious and affecting series of counterintuitive essays by one of the most original and unexpected thinkers around...This is a book itself teeming with ideas and possibilities: maddening, stimulating, exciting and surprising, testifying in its own way to the expanding prospects of ideas that turn topsy-turvy, every-which-way as we try to make sense of the great unknowns."—The Arts Desk

"Ehrenreich's observations about our culture-wide denial of bodily decay lead[s]...down distinct paths of interrogation and discovery. For all [her] research, [she is] not prepared to give us easy answers. Still...dry humor and raw, personal accounts help make thinking about our common fate bearable. We may have a few extra years yet to sip kale smoothies, run marathons and get tested for everything under the sun, but we ought not make physical health our ultimate hope."—Wall Street Journal

"Engaging...Ehrenreich's scathing takedown of the wellness industry, New Age banalities and the epidemic of overdiagnosis will have you reconsidering how you live and die, and possibly second-guessing your next colonoscopy."—Newsweek

APRIL 2018 - AudioFile

Narrator Joyce Bean strikes just the right blend of prickly and wry humor for Barbara Ehrenreich’s polemic countering a number of sacred cows in health care. Ehrenreich rails against over-testing, the unclear benefits of mindfulness, and workplace wellness programs that cause stress rather than good health. Employing the twin lenses of class and cellular biology, she rejects the argument that individuals can control their health. Bean’s delivery is clear, energetic, and appropriately unsentimental but with an underlying tone of irony and absurdity that provides levity. It all matches Ehrenreich perfectly. Ehrenreich asserts that she is now old enough to die and so is done with annual physicals and will seek medical care only to treat symptoms. Of course, there are millions of Americans who lack access to medical care at the same time that others are overtreated. A.B. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2018-02-06
Ehrenreich (Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything, 2014, etc.) returns with research and rumination on the complexity of our human bodies and the misconceptions of our minds.The author has a doctorate in cellular immunology, and throughout the text, she employs the erudition that earned her degree, the social consciousness that has long informed her writing, and the compassion that endears her to her many fans. Ehrenreich leads us through the recent biomedical research that shows us, among other things, that our immune systems can turn on us, actually easing (rather that preventing) the spread of cancer cells. Elsewhere, she writes about the puzzles of menstruation (why do human women bleed far more than other creatures?), autoimmune diseases, and the pervasive belief that we can control our lives. "We are not," she writes, "the sole authors of our destinies or of anything else." The author also explores the social and cultural aspects of health and aging: She notes how wealthier, healthier people look upon the poor—who are more likely to smoke and eat poorly—with moral disdain. She goes after the medical establishment for what she believes are superfluous, redundant tests and procedures, and she assails the self-help industry for our currently dominant, and often unhelpful, ideas of selfhood and wellness. Ehrenreich sees the body-mind connection as incredibly complex and discusses the odd notion that cells often do what they want rather than what they're "supposed" to do. The author will certainly not endear herself to the pious among us; her discussions of the origins and evolution of religious ideas are hardly orthodox. Mostly, she urges that we recognize that death is natural, that we enjoy our lives while we can, and that we disabuse ourselves of any self-serving notions of post-mortem permanence or even influence.A powerful text that floods the mind with illumination—and with agonizing questions.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170092376
Publisher:	Hachette Audio
Publication date:	04/10/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos