Based on Steve Salerno's investigative reporting - and the inside look at the industry he got while working at a leading "lifestyle" publisher - "Sham", shows how thinly credentialed "experts" now dispense worthless or even counterproductive advice on everything from mental health to relationships to diet to personal finance to business strategy. Americans alone spend upwards of $8 billion every year on self-help programmes and products. And those staggering financial costs are actually the least of our worries. "Sham" demonstrates how the self-help movement's core philosophies have infected virtually every aspect of Western life - the home, the workplace, the schools and more. Salerno exposes the downside of being uplifted, showing how the "empowering" message that dominates self-help today proves just as damaging as the blame-shifting rhetoric of the "Recovery" movement. "Sham" reveals: how society is getting sick from self-help, the hyping of hope, and overdosing on Oprah; the inside story on the biggest names in the industry from Dr. Phil to Dr. Laura, from Anthony Robbins to John Gray; how the 'gurus' target the same people time and again without ever helping them; how the Recovery movement has eradicated personal responsibility by labelling just about anything - from drug abuse to "sex addiction" to shoplifting - a dysfunction or disease; how self-help rhetoric has pushed people away from proven medical treatments by persuading them that they can cure themselves through sheer application of will. "Sham" exposes how the Self-Help and Actualization industry has created its own class of perpetual victims - people dependent on self-help