How to Be Well Audiobook By Amy Larocca cover art

How to Be Well

Navigating Our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure at a Time

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How to Be Well

By: Amy Larocca
Narrated by: Amy Larocca
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About this listen

A deeply researched, lively, and personal exploration of the multibillion-dollar wellness industry—about why women are feeling so un-well and how this trend has shaped our thinking about health and self-care

Peloton. Pilates. Biohacking. Colonics. Ashwagandha. Today, the wellness industry is a $3.7 trillion behemoth that touches us all. In this timely and clear-eyed book, journalist Amy Larocca peels back the layers behind the wellness movement and reckons with its promises and profits. How did we get here and how did the idea of wellness become integrated with women's lives? And how did we end up spending so much money on products that may not work at all?

Amy Larocca takes listeners into the communities that swear by their activated charcoal toothpaste and green juice enemas, explaining what each of these practices really is—and what the science says. Larocca holds a magnifying glass to alternative medicine and nouveau lifestyle prescriptions—and tries a lot herself along the way—ultimately delivering an assessment of how the wellness industry embodies our (gendered, class-based, racialized) perceptions of care and self-improvement, and how it preys on our unshakable fear of the unknown. She traces the history of how the beauty and fashion industries have peddled snake oil to women for decades—and why we keep coming back for more.

A clear-eyed and honest portrait of the weird world of wellness, How to Be Well lays bare the ways in which the simple notion of caring for oneself has become a seriously big business.

©2025 Amy Larocca (P)2025 Random House Audio
Alternative & Complementary Medicine Personal Development Personal Success Health Physical Exercise Medicine

Critic reviews

★ “A sharply pointed look at the vast wellness industry and ‘the burden of being healthy and attractive’ it places on consumers.”Kirkus (starred review)

★ "The present-day vogue for wellness is merely the latest attempt to convince women to buy products to correct for imagined deficiencies, according to this trenchant debut critique. Fashion reporter Larocca suggests that beauty product manufacturers responded to the rise of body positivity in the 2000s by promoting the concept of “glow,” rather than thinness, as the central marker of beauty, creating the illusion of inclusivity while insisting that looking good requires topical ointments and body brushes.... Penetrating and thought-provoking, this will cause readers to think twice before reaching for the latest purported cure-all."Publishers Weekly (starred review)

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I heard Amy’s interview on “Fresh Air” & thought this would be an interesting read, but she was not a great narrator: her voice, her run-on sentences: it came off being a long list of irritating obvious scamming/marketing ploys against women who are gullibly hunting for the next fix-it. I didn’t learn much and won’t be reading anything further on the subjects.

The same old same old

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Author's tone was so condescending- especially when discussing menopause. Couldn't figure out where she was going with all the information.

Pass on this

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Author is hard to understand. It just goes on and on without making a point.

Couldn’t finish it

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