What is a self-help book?
The easy answer is that a self-help book is one that offers you some kind of strategy or technique you can use, on your own, to better yourself. Most of us associate self-help books with psychology and psychotherapy, but there are also many examples of self-help books about health and law topics. Self-help books take the vast and complicated subject of you, the reader, as their topic. This is how they can be distinguished from how-to books and instruction manuals that might teach you how to do a more limited task like changing your oil or milking a cow. In 1859, Samuel Smiles published the first self-help book we know of. He was a doctor and political reformer from Scotland who is associated with a movement called Chartism that sought to liberalize the British Parliament. The book was titled, surprisingly enough, Self-Help, and it advocated self-improvement, industrious living, and frugality. Interestingly, the book is the provenance of the often-cited line, “Heaven helps those who hel
A self-help book is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a book written to help the reader with a personal problem such as a relationship, health or behavioral issue. Self-help books are usually written by a psychologist, life coach, doctor or other expert on a certain topic. Television psychologist Dr. Philip MacGraw, known as Dr. Phil to his fans, has authored many popular self-help books on weight loss and relationship issues. These are common topics in the self-help genre, but business how-to self-help books are also in demand. The Dummies series of books that includes guidance on work topics such as how to master a certain software program is a good example of the business self-help book. Rather than taking a course, a business person can often save a lot of time as well as money by learning new computer skill through books. Of course, while business solutions may be rather easily gleaned from a self-help book, a book alone is often not the answer when it comes to serious relationshi
