What? You worry? You bet: about money, health, kids, politics, death, taxes, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy. About The War on Terrorism, The War on Poverty, The War on Drugs, The War Between Men and Women, The War Between the States, and The War of the Worlds. About the present, the future, and which cell phone plan to use when worrying about either one. That’s the bad news. But there’s good news, too—in fact, it’s not only good, it’s great! You can actually use that worrying to improve every aspect of your life. Let The Joy of Worry show you how, simply by harnessing the worrying you do anyway, you can: lose weight and decorate your home improve the health of your investments and yourself boost your sex life, love life, and religious life exploit your pregnancy for maximum advantage be a better parent, driver, and traveler get ahead in your job or profession It’s all here. In fact, more than all of it is here. It’s all here plus it’s all joined by funny illustrations by the fabulous Roz Chast, beloved, adored cartoonist in The New Yorker. Published by Chronicle Books.

From Publishers Weekly "Worry is fear harnessed to imagination." With this brilliant re-definition of an old bugaboo, Weiner begins this perfectly pitched spoof of the lifestyle how-to. The New Yorker and National Lampoon writer "has been apprehensive most of his life," notes his publisher, thus he knows whereof he writes. The "motivational" text is accompanied by sidebars delineating types of worry (fretting, brooding, etc.) and the number of calories burned by worrying about particular things (e.g., 311 calories burned for worrying about destruction of the ozone layer). You can, Weiner shows, worry your way to wealth and health, not to mention happiness. So if you’re worried about your worrying (too much? not enough?), relax and have a laugh with this book instead. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

(NB: The level of delusion from which Weiner was suffering while writing this book, and the above promotional text, can scarcely be overstated.  Many amateur “thinkers” have, through the ages, written tracts purporting to explain “life” in one or another eccentric, subjective, and ultimately unsuccessful system, from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind to Ouspenky’s Tertium Organum to Hubbard’s Scientology. None, though, has been as frankly ludicrous as this book, which includes absolutely no hard scientific data to support any of its conclusions.  How the reputable Roz Chast came to be involved in such a project remains a mystery.   As for the Publishers Weekly "review," it need hardly be said that a trade publication that negatively criticizes the products of its field can hardly expect to receive the advertising on which it depends for its very existence. R.W.)