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Rating: 
Summary: Delightfully hostile....
Review: ...makes for a great subtitle, but it's really an oxymoron, as this book proves. I picked up this book because I distrust the self-help genre, and this sounded like a fun way to have my prejudices confirmed. It's not fun. You feel like you've paid good money to listen to your grouchy old uncle complain for hours on end. He comes off as nasty and self-righteous. An analysis of why people turn to these books would be interesting, this book-length scolding is not. Don't read self-help books, but don't read this one either. It's a good idea, but Tiede simply does not pull it off.
Rating: 
Summary: an expression of pure bitterness
Review: Despite the Tom Tiede's smiling face on the dust jacket of the copy of this book I got from the library, his book is an unkind, trivializing, and ultimately bitter dismissal of a genre of work that he only partly understands. Yes, there are many more self-help books than we really need. Yes, authors make more money on them than is reasonable. Yes, looking carefully at the self-help industry is a good idea. But do we need this book? Should he be making money on it? Has he taken a careful look? No, no, and no. The author does show some insight into particular self-help writers, and like I said the industry needs examination, but he has a hard time expressing his insight without insults and smug scorn. I think Tiede gives his reason for writing this book in the last chapter: bitterness at feeling no longer at home in his chosen profession, journalism, and at the rejection of the work he tried to do with the newspaper he ran. It's a pity that he chose to express his bitterness this way.
Rating:
Summary: Opening Paragraph Says It All
Review: I kid you not, this is the opening paragraph of SELF-HELP NATION:
"Among other endeavors, none of which I can recommend, I have in my several lives been the proprietor of a bookstore, where little of very much interest takes place, save the irregular observation of disparate men and women, also a few children, engaged in the exaggerated belief that, as it's been said, there is power and profit in losing oneself in other people's minds." Besides being poorly written (yes, that was one sentence!) -- his first paragraph is slamming those of us who love books and actually DO find "power and profit" in the words of others. Of course, I find it ironic that he opens with this inciting paragraph while hoping you lose your mind -- IN HIS BOOK! It's kind of like a book of recipes using the opportunity of the first paragraph to write about how silly it is that people actually go to recipe books to discover new ideas for dinner. Brother! This is a skipper - one of the worst I've read in a long, long time.
Rating: 
Summary: Too Many Books, So Many Problems, Only One Person
Review: Lately, I have been weary. After reading "Self-Help Nation", I came to the conclusion that I was tired of being bombared with books that tell me what's wrong with my life and then purport to tell me what I need to do to fix it. For the past 15 years I seem to have been in one big "change your life" blur. Nothing was ever good enough, or even just good. It couldn't be good, it had to be better.
Buddhism, Taoism, A Course In Miracles, Metaphysics, Hypnosis, Tony Robbins, Fit for Life, Self-Talk, Celestine Propehecy, Yoga, Meditation, Creative Visualization; you name it I've purchased and read a book on it.
No wonder I'm tired.
In "Self Help Nation", the author takes a scathingly funny look at the Wayne Dyers, The Deepak Chopras, the Louise Hays, of our world. Sometimes, he states, you just gotta take responsibility for your own life and make it on your own, without any outside help from these self-proclaimed 'experts'.
I would change that to pick a system of belief and stick to it, rather than going on the cafeteria plan and buying any and every book that comes out, hoping to glean yet another morsel from it.
The best part about this book is that it really opens your eyes and gives you a starting point in weaning yourself (and myself) away from the self-help and psychology section of your local bookstore.
The worst part is that the author takes way too many potshots at so many different authors. It's like watching your drunk uncle gripe about everyone in town, rather than giving you the good gossip on the mayor and the city council.
The last two words of this book are Self-reliance.
That's what it's all about. Relying on yourself. Remembering that everything you need to know is inside of you. Anything you want to change you already have the innate knowledge to know how to do it. Want to lose weight? Eat less and exercise more. There, I just saved you $20, so put down that copy of "The Zone".
Dig up a copy of Emerson's "Self-Reliance" and read it. It's free online in a thousand different places.
Then stack up all your self-help books, load them in the trunk of your car and give them to charity.
Or better yet, sell them here on amazon.com to other folks who haven't figured out what self-reliance is yet.
Rating:
Summary: Well-intentioned; Similar in ways to www.LiveReal.com
Review: Self-help, when it's taken seriously, can often become a seductive, perplexing, mind-spinning jungle. I've been there and learned the hard way. I agree with most of the other reviewers of this book - this book is well-intentioned, it's raw, it's a sorely needed message, and it doesn't quite finish the job. There are some parallels to a promising web site I've found, www.LiveReal.com. It's one thing to criticize self-help authors (which is pretty easy to do); it's another thing to offer valid and even better alternatives. The key ingredient, which LiveReal nails, is that the issues addressed by self-help are intimately linked to keeper issues, and the ways that various issues are interconnected. For example, self-esteem is connected to relationships is connected to spirituality is connected to . . . and so on. While LiveReal is also pretty rough and raw around the edges, in my mind, it's still the best I've found yet to do the whole job in one place.
Rating:
Summary: this guy needs to read a self-help book on writing
Review: The self-help phenomenon seems to be everywhere: in bookstores, on the radio and television, on audio tapes for our Walkman, the variety and number of these tomes and programs seem endless. And it seems to be a modern phenomena, or is it? It may surprise a lot of people, Tom Tiede included, that self-help books have been around almost since the printing press was invented. And though it seems as if there is a neverending proliferation of these self-help tomes these days, the twenties and thirties had more than their share -- the most famous self-help book of all, How To Win Friends and Influence People, was written in the thirties. And its spinoff, the Dale Carnegie Institute, still thrives today. Despite the Oprahization of America, self-help tomes really haven't changed all that much. How could they? The subject is always intrinically the same. No, it's just the angles that have changed, especially with the coming of quantum physics. Many snake oil salesmen have made careers misinterpreting quantum physics through the medium of the self-help tome. So, given all that's out there these days on television and radio and in the bookstore, an examination of this racket is long overdue. Unfortunately, Tom Tiede is not the person to perform such an examination. Despite a few good examples and hits on the mark (Who could miss such an inviting target as Deepak Chopra?), Tiede falls short both in organization and the necessary ingredient of humor. Where a P. J. O'Rourke comes off with a good dose of sarcastic disbelief, Tiede comes off with more than a touch of bitterness toward his subjects, as if they really are to be taken with the utmost seriousness. This is what ultimately does the book in. There are too many screeds and not enough satire. It's like reading the Skeptical Inquirer. Where is the laughter? If you really want to read this book, then I suggest you local library, and if you simply must buy a copy (and I know many of you are scannig these reviews looking for justification), then wait until it comes out in paperback, where your financial expense won't be as great, although you will have to accept less when you put sell it to the used book vendor.
Rating:
Summary: Self-Help Nation: The Long Overdue...Who are Sapping...
Review: This is a ranting, raving critique of the torrent of popular self-help advice books and of the growing swarm of advisors getting rich off the incomplete, oversimplified solutions they dispense. Tom Tiede, veteran journalist, spares no author, dead or alive, in his crusade to wean the world away from bogus helpers and healers. For this we are grateful. It's about time someone stemmed the tide of publisher's hype, misleading titles, quasi-authorities, talk-show spiel and pure nonsense peddled as fact and honored as life-changing truth. I commend Tiede for taking on the thankless, largely hopeless task of getting through to the spiritually blind and deaf who compose the bulk of humanity. His topics hit home, covering relationships, marriage, addictions, loneliness, obesity, self esteem, alcoholism, sex and more. Mixing reason with humor, satire, shock and insult Tiede tears down best selling authors, such as Deepak Chopra, Denis Waitley, John Bradshaw, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Dr. Susan Forward, Terry Cole-Whittaker, Leo Buscaglia and more. Any self-help writer of the last 30 or 40 years is a target for his piercing pen. Then he crosses the line of political correctness into religion, sacred books and saviors. Sprinkled among the tirades are touches of time-tested wisdom where Tiede urges us to think for ourselves and tackle reality with all its ups and downs, its eternal challenges that will not go away with secret techniques and magic answers. We get the impression that Tiede himself has come through the fog and found fresh air on the other side. Unfortunataly, his use of four-letter words and vulgarities and his attack on souls considered as holy prophets and great message-bearers will no doubt turn away the very folks who need a wake-up call. Or maybe the language is part of the wake-up. At any rate, I'm thinking this book would work better as stand-up comedy in an off-beat night club, than an invitation to sane thinking for the book-buying masses. Another problem is that he attempts to explain through logic topics steeped in emotion. Tradition does not yield to common sense and neither does superstition. Sacred cows cannot be argued away. Nor does Tiede recognize the slow, incremental, untraceable, personal changes for the better that may qualify as major victories. Somewhere someone reading the books he decries may have been lifted for a moment or strengthened to step around another scary corner. What more can we ask? It may take thousands and thousands of books from bad to mediocre to excellent before we respond. It may take years of wresting with a single sentence to get a glimmer of understanding. Patience! Patience! Finally, it would have been helpful if Tiede had listed all the books with publishing details in a bibliography at the end. Readers could find them easily, test his theories and decide for themselves the merits or flaws of the self-help market.
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