Amy Alkon – författare

"Amy Alkon is intellectually promiscuous--and funny as hell." -- Paleopsychologist Howard Bloom, author of The Lucifer Principle

We all just suck it up every day. You leave the house for a latte and somebody''ll flip you the bird on your way and force their loud cellphone conversation on you once you''re there.It doesn''t have to be that way, says award-winning syndicated columnist Amy Alkon. Her hilarious stories of her in-your-face encounters with rude people and businesses will inspire you to stand up to the boors in your own world.Alkon not only gives the offenders a taste of their own medicine, she delves into anthropology, psychology, and behavioral science to figure out why we''re rude and how we can stop all the intruding, shoving, and shouting. She ensures that all these rude people get their comeuppance:-Lax parents-Internet bullies-Rude drivers-Negligent businesses-Telemarketing executives-Car thieves-Parking space hogs-That loud jerk in the drugstore lineIn this funny, ferocious and freewheeling expose, Alkon gives you the tools you need to confront these abusers and restore common courtesy, respect and good manners to society...one chastened cellphone shouter at a time.

We live in a world that’s very different from the one in which Emily Post came of age. Many of us who are nice (but, who also sometimes say "f*ck") are frequently at a loss for guidelines about how to be a good person who deals effectively with the onslaught of rudeness we all encounter. To lead us through this this miasma of modern manners, syndicated columnist Amy Alkon—The Advice Goddess—gives us a new set of manners for our 21st century lives. In chapters titled "The Telephone," "The Internet," "The Apology," and "Communicating," among others, Alkon maps out new rules that go beyond what fork to use to answer real questions we all have:

• When is it okay to phone somebody instead of emailing or texting? When is it rude?• Why shouldn''t you tweet about a guest at a private dinner party? Everybody knows privacy is dead, right?• How do you shut the guy up in the pharmacy line with his cellphone on speaker?• When is it right to approach somebody who’s crying in public and when is it right to leave him alone?• When should you unfriend somebody on Facebook and what do you say when she calls you on it?• If you have an STD, when do you tell people, what do you say and do you have to contact everyone you’ve ever had sex with?

Real advice for today with more than a touch of humor, Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say "F*ck" is destined to give good old Emily a shove off the etiquette shelf (if that''s not too rude to say).

Amy Alkon presents Unf*ckology, a “science-help” book that knocks the self-help genre on its unscientific ass. You can finally stop fear from being your boss and put an end to your lifelong social suckage.

Have you spent your life shrinking from opportunities you were dying to seize but feel “that’s just who I am”? Well, screw that! You actually can change, and it doesn’t take exceptional intelligence or a therapist who’s looking forward to finally buying Aruba after decades of listening to you yammer on.

Transforming yourself takes revolutionary science-help from Amy Alkon, who has spent the past 20 years translating cutting-edge behavioral science into highly practical advice in her award-winning syndicated column. In Unf*ckology, Alkon pulls together findings from neuroscience, behavioral science, evolutionary psychology, and clinical psychology. She explains everything in language you won’t need a psych prof on speed-dial to understand—and with the biting dark humor that made Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck such a great read. She debunks widely-accepted but scientifically unsupported notions about self-esteem, shame, willpower, and more and demonstrates that:

- Thinking your way into changing (as so many therapists and self-help books advise) is the most inefficient way to go about it.

- The mind is bigger than the brain, meaning that your body and your behavior are your gym for turning yourself into the new, confident you.

- Fear is not just the problem; it’s also the solution.

- By targeting your fears with behavior, you make changes in your brain that reshape your habitual ways of behaving and the emotions that go with them.

Follow Amy Alkon''s groundbreaking advice in Unf*ckology, and eventually, you’ll no longer need to act like the new you; you’ll become the new you. And how totally f*cking cool is that?