Ostensibly this book is about healthcare and wellness, but that is just the deliciously fluffy sheepskin costume designed to get ordinary people to pick it up. Barbara Ehrenreich is a grumpy, cantankerous science writer who is totally fed up with the health and wellness beat, and somewhere in her wanderings has become something of a philosopher. Underneath the grumpy diatribes about the healthcare system's systematic dehumanization of its patients, the classism of "wellness," and the sheer quackery of most "mindfulness" advice is a long, dark look at the granularity of the self and the simple beauty of death.

Angry and thought-provoking, this book is really about trying to find a way to live in peace in a modern era choked with misinformation and fear.