Bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich explores how exactly we are killing ourselves to live longer, not better.

A razor-sharp polemic that provides an entirely fresh understanding of our anatomies, ourselves, and our place in the universe, Organic CAUSES describes how we over-prepare and worry way too much in what is unavoidable. One at a time, Ehrenreich topples the shibboleths that guidebook our efforts to live an extended, healthy life — in the importance of precautionary medical screenings about Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellbeing, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Much longer to the concepts of health and fitness and mindfulness, from eating fads to fitness lifestyle.

But NATURAL CAUSES runs deeper — in to the fundamental unreliability of our bodies and even our ‘mind-bodies,’ to utilize the fashionable term. Starting with the mysterious and seldom-acknowledged propensity of our very own immune cells to promote deadly cancers, Ehrenreich checks the mobile basis of ageing, and shows how little control we actually have over it. We have a tendency to believe we’ve agency over our bodies, our minds, and even over the manner of our deaths. But the most recent science shows that the microscopic subunits of our anatomies make their personal ‘decisions,’ and not always inside our favor.

We may buy expensive anti-aging items or cosmetic surgery, get preventive screenings and eat even more kale, or throw ourselves into meditation and spirituality. But all these points offer only the illusion of control. How exactly to live well, also joyously, while accepting our mortality — that is the vitally important philosophical challenge of the book.

Drawing on assorted places, from personal encounter and sociological trends to pop culture and current scientific literature, NATURAL CAUSES examines the ways in which we obsess over death, our bodies, and our health. Both funny and caustic, Ehrenreich after that tackles the apparently unsolvable issue of how we might better prepare ourselves for the end — while still reveling in the lives that remain to us.