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American Breakdown

American Breakdown
Designed by Alban Fischer, the book cover has a background with a vertical split that's black on the right and a teal wallpaper pattern with blue flowers on the left, from the top down is the title reads AMERICAN BREAKDOWN in a sans serif font, and then an elaborate gold-framed image on the left that contains a nineteenth-century sepia photograph of a sombre white woman (Alice James) with her dark hair up in a braid around her crown, and on the right side a metal, bolted recovery chamber with a clear window frames a yellow canary sitting on a perch. Below that is the subtitle in yellow: OUR AILING NATION, MY BODY’S REVOLT, AND THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY WOMAN WHO BROUGHT ME BACK TO LIFE, and then below that the author’s name in white sans serif: JENNIFER LUNDEN.

By Jennifer Lunden

Here's another giveaway offered by the author directly like the one previously by editor Raven Belasco. Jennifer Lunden is author of American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body's Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life and she is generously offering three copies to you all (hardcover, audiobook or e-book). Details below.

Designed by Alban Fischer, the book cover has a background with a vertical split that's black on the right and a teal wallpaper pattern with blue flowers on the left, from the top down is the title reads AMERICAN BREAKDOWN in a sans serif font, and then an elaborate gold-framed image on the left that contains a nineteenth-century sepia photograph of a sombre white woman (Alice James) with her dark hair up in a braid around her crown, and on the right side a metal, bolted recovery chamber with a clear window frames a yellow canary sitting on a perch. Below that is the subtitle in yellow: OUR AILING NATION, MY BODY’S REVOLT, AND THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY WOMAN WHO BROUGHT ME BACK TO LIFE, and then below that the author’s name in white sans serif: JENNIFER LUNDEN.

About the book

When Jennifer Lunden became chronically ill shortly after moving from Canada to Maine, her case was a medical mystery. Just 21, unable to hold a book or stand for a shower, she lost her job and consigned herself to her bed. The doctor she went to for help told her she was “just depressed.”
After suffering from this enigmatic illness for five years, she discovered an unlikely source of hope and healing: a biography of Alice James, the bright, witty, and often bedridden sibling of the acclaimed novelist Henry James and the equally eminent psychologist-philosopher William James. Alice suffered from a life-shattering illness known as neurasthenia, now often dismissed as a “fashionable illness.”
In this meticulously researched and illuminating debut, Lunden interweaves her own experience with Alice’s, exploring the history of medicine and the effects of the industrial revolution and late-stage capitalism to tell a riveting story of how we are a nation struggling—and failing—to be healthy.
Although science—and the politics behind its funding—has in many ways let Lunden and millions like her down, in the end science offers a revelation that will change how readers think about the ecosystems of their bodies, their communities, the country, and the planet.
A black and white headshot of the author, a 55-year-old bespectacled White woman with a round face, apple cheeks, and short salt-and-pepper hair, gazing directly at the camera, her expression serious, but with a glint of a smile in her eyes and mouth. Photo credit: Travis Widrick. 

About the author

Jennifer Lunden’s debut essay, “The Butterfly Effect,” won first prize in the Creative Nonfiction animal issue (Winter 2011), went on to win a Pushcart, and later was anthologized in True Stories, Well Told… From 20 Years of Creative Nonfiction Magazine. She told a version of “The Butterfly Effect” at Slant, a storytelling night organized by the Telling Room, in Portland, Maine. The essay has now been optioned for a short film.
In “Exposed: The Mammogram Myth and the Pinkwashing of America,” a piece for Orion, Lunden revealed the politics behind the corporate-driven breast cancer awareness campaign. Her paper about the health impacts of industrialism was selected for the anthology Charlotte Perkins Gilman: New Texts, New Contexts. “Evidence,” a personal essay about getting lost in the woods and the vagaries of memory, appeared in River Teeth and was subsequently named a Best American Essays notable. It was later republished as “Evidence, in Track Changes” in DIAGRAM.
Lunden’s poems have been published in Sweet, Peacock Journal, Poetry Canada Review and The Café Review, and she has read them live on CBC radio. “Killing Things,” a flash fiction piece, appeared in Wigleaf and “The Fish Story” was published in Eclectica. Her documentary Sadie’s Last Day was an official selection of the Maine International Film Festival.
A Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and former therapist, she provides individual and group supervision to other therapists and has also taught social work online for Simmons University and the University of New England. Her essay about therapeutic writing, “Salvage, Salvation, Salve: Writing That Heals,” appeared in the Spring 2013 issue of Creative Nonfiction. In 2012 she was named Maine’s Social Worker of the Year for her campaign to prevent cuts to Maine’s Medicaid program.
The recipient of the 2019 Maine Arts Fellowship for literary arts and the 2016 Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Foundation Scholarship in Nonfiction, Lunden, a dual citizen, has also been awarded two grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and one from the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hedgebrook, Monson Arts, Hewnoaks Artist Residency, and the Dora Maar House in Menerbes, France.
An engaging speaker and storyteller, Lunden has presented at the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA program, the University of New England, and the KGB Bar Reading Series in New York, among others, and delights in joining college classrooms as an online guest to discuss her work.
She and her husband, the artist Frank Turek, live in a little house in the city, where they keep several backyard chickens, two cats, one Great Dane, and some gloriously untamed gardens.

Details

1) Any disabled person in the US is eligible for this giveaway. You do not need to disclose any details about your disability.

If you already received a book from one of my previous giveaways, please consider letting other people have a chance.

2) The first 3 people will receive a hardcover, audiobook or e-book. If you do not receive a reply that means the books have been claimed or you did not include all the required information.

3) Send an email to DisabilityVisibilityProject@gmail.com with ‘Jennifer Lunden Giveaway’ in the title of the message. Do not reply to this post!!

4) Include the following information in your message:

  • First and last name
  • Mailing address
  • Preferred format: hardcover, audiobook, or e-book

Please note: I will send this information along with your email address to the publisher. They are responsible for confirming your details and sending you the book. Please be patient!

Published by:

Alice Wong

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