This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike. by Augusten Burroughs

Description

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Running With Scissors comes a groundbreaking book that explores how to survive the “un-survivable” and will challenge your notion of self-help books To say that Augusten Burroughs has lived an unusual life is an understatement.  From having no formal education past third grade and being raised by his mother’s psychiatrist in the seventies to enjoying one of the most successful advertising careers of the eighties to experiencing a spectacular downfall and rehab stint in the nineties to having a number one bestselling writing career in the new millennium, Burroughs has faced humiliation, transformation and everything in between.  This Is How is his no-holds-barred book of advice on topics as varied as:

·         How to feel like crap

·         How to ride an elevator

·         How to be thin

·         How to be fat

·         How to find love

·         How to feel sorry for yourself

·         How to get the job

·         How to end your life

·         How to remain unhealed

·         How to finish your drink

·         How to regret as little as possible

·         And much more

Told with Burroughs's unique voice, black humor, and in-your-face advice, This is How is Running With Scissors—with recipes.

Editorial Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, May 2012: In writing and in life, Augusten Burroughs has repeatedly summoned the courage to grab the wolves of his past by their foaming muzzles and peer into their wild eyes until he owns them–and because of this, he's survived nearly every horrific experience a person in a modern-day, first-world country could face and emerged as an astonishingly well-adjusted person. After turning his profoundly messed-up early life and its alcoholic aftermath into six harrowing, uplifting memoirs–including Running with Scissors and Dry–Burroughs lost interest in writing about himself. He kept meeting people who were locked in the same struggles he’d overcome and decided they needed to know they had options for fixing their lives. In This Is How, Burroughs delivers prescriptions for handling life's most pernicious problems. Don't let the snake-oil-salesmannish title put you off: this is raw, hard-knock-life advice, veering from brutal to hilarious to deeply compassionate. Burroughs doesn’t really believe in “happiness” or “healing.” He’s honest about the limits of recovery, but even those in the depths of despair will be energized by his exhortations to claw their way back to OK, even if it means leaving the life they’ve known in the dust. –Mari Malcolm