Asking for a Friend

"Take my advice and read this fascinating book immediately. It's the only piece of advice I can offer that even begins to compare to the advice of the writers it chronicles. Whether it's Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Spock, or 'The King of Quora,' Jessica Weisberg captures her subjects' work and personalities with engaging insight. As she does so, she also offers an illuminating look into what society craves advice on in any given age (from retaining your job in the 1930s to retaining your marriage in the 1990s). It's a must read for anyone who loves learning about history and human angst, as well as those who love their local paper's advice column."

"Rich with insight and surprising facts, Jessica Weisberg's ingenious appraisal of America's guidance-givers doubles as a wholly unexpected history of our national psyche. At long last, the lowly advice column gets its due!"

"An oddly soothing antidote to the millenarian terrors of today, Jessica Weisberg's history of ordinary American anxiety is as warm, funny, entertaining, and chattily insightful as the advice-dispensers she portrays. In the centuries before the internet, these were the ones we turned to with questions so obscure, embarrassing, weird, or mortifyingly personal that only a stranger would do."

"Jessica Weisberg's hilarious, enlightening odyssey through the history of advice columns chronicles the evolution of our anxieties over how to act. However weird or offensive some of our questions have been, it's heartening to know that at least we've always been trying. A surprising and delightful read."

"Welcome to a hilarious dinner party of outrageous characters! Each one of Weisberg's profiles is like a witty, surprisingly profound toast. I can't stop talking about this book to everyone I know; it snuck up on me as one of the most insightful books about human nature that I've ever read."