Jessica Lamb Shapiro’s witty, sharp look at the $1 billion self-help industry in America,
By Jessica Lamb-Shapiro Self-help has been around for thousands of years, and it has been loved and hated for just as long. The earliest progenitor of self-help books was an Ancient Egyptian genre called “Sebayt,” an instructional literature on life (“Sebayt” means “teaching”). A letter of advice from father to son, The Maxims of Ptahotep, written circa 2800 B.C., advocated moral behavior and self-control. Ancient Greek texts offered meditations, aphorisms, and maxims on the best ways to live. During the Early Middle Ages, Middle Ages, and Renaissance, Mirror-of-Princes books told stories of kings whose behavior should be imitated or avoided. These were similar to today’s inspirational stories, like the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series, except they also included cautionary tales. Self-betterment literature took a great leap forward after 1455, when Gutenberg made mass printing cheaper and available for wider distribution. Suddenly, anyone could write down their prescriptions for th...