Natural Causes: Life, Death and the Illusion of Control - Hardcover

'One of our great iconoclasts, lucid, thought-provoking and instructive' -- Guardian

'The wit and fighting spirit of this book show no sign of failing powers and will delight Ehrenreich's many admirers' -- Sunday Times

'[Ehrenreich] has a surgically precise way with words, a sense of humour and a PhD in cellular immunology... this book is joyous. It is neither anti-medicine nor anti-prevention; it is pro-balance, pro-scepticism and pro-perspective... Natural Causes is about hope [and] as with so many of Ehrenreich's books, Natural Causes is a much-needed tonic' -- Observer

'[A] polemical, wry, hilarious and affecting series of counter-intuitive essays by one of the most original and unexpected thinkers around... Written in characteristically pithy prose, Ehrenreich takes on the medical profession, the wellness industry [...] not to mention variations of Buddhism-lite... Ehrenreich is an iconoclast, her weapons a kind of calm common sense combined with an ironic sense of the absurd' --Arts Desk

'Natural Causes is a logical successor to Smile or Die [and] takes aim at the contemporary notion that not only can we combat disease with the right attitude, we can also prevent it -- but only if we dedicate our lives to the pursuit... [Ehrenreich] leads us on a journey that is anarchic, funny and fizzling with the joy of living --Sunday Herald

We tend to believe we have agency over our bodies, our minds and even our deaths. Yet emerging science challenges our assumptions of mastery: at the microscopic level, the cells in our bodies facilitate tumours and attack other cells, with life-threatening consequences. In this revelatory book, Barbara Ehrenreich argues that our bodies are a battleground over which we have little control, and lays bare the cultural charades that shield us from this knowledge. Challenging everything we think we know about life and death, she also offers hope - that we find our place in a natural world teeming with animation and endless possibility.