First, We Make the Beast Beautiful

Sarah Wilson is an intrepid solver of problems and investigator of how to live a better life. For five years, she has made it her mission to help the world to quit sugar, after discovering the health dangers of this ubiquitous and addictive ingredient. In her new book, she turns her attention to another big problem: that of anxiety.

Sarah has been an anxiety sufferer her whole life. She describes herself as 'all striving and no arriving.' As in the early days of the sugar experiment, Sarah makes herself a subject of one, and starts investigating. She looks at the triggers and the treatments, the fashions and the fads. She reads widely and interviews fellow sufferers, mental health experts, philosophers and, even, the Dalai Lama.

She pulls at the thread of accepted definitions of anxiety, and unravels the notion that it is a difficult, dangerous disease that must be medicated into submission. Ultimately, she re-frames anxiety as a spiritual quest rather than a burdensome affliction. She describes it as a state of yearning, one that will lead us closer to the things in life that really matter.

Practical and poetic, wise and funny, this is a small book with a big heart. It will encourage the myriad sufferers of the world's most common mental illness to feel not just better about their condition but delighted by the possibilities it offers for a richer, fuller life.