By the acclaimed author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing.
THE MYTH OF NORMAL:
Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture
by Dr. Gabor Maté & Daniel Maté
Knopf Canada (Canada) / Avery (US), May 2022
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)
In this revolutionary book, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the rise. So what is really “normal” when it comes to health?
Over four decades of clinical experience, Maté has come to recognize the prevailing understanding of “normal” as false, neglecting the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds at the expense of good health. For all our expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today’s culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines emotional balance. Now Maté brings his perspective to the great untangling of common myths about what makes us sick, connects the dots between the maladies of individuals and the declining soundness of society—and offers a compassionate guide for health and healing. Cowritten with his son Daniel, THE MYTH OF NORMAL is Maté’s most ambitious and urgent book yet.
A renowned speaker and bestselling author, Dr. Gabor Maté is highly sought after for his expertise on a range of topics including addiction, stress, and childhood development. Dr. Maté has written several bestselling books, including the award-winning In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection, and Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It, and has coauthored Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers. His works have been published internationally in nearly thirty languages.
Daniel Maté is a musical theater lyricist and composer whose work has been honored with the Edward Kleban Prize, a Jonathan Larson Foundation Grant, and the Cole Porter Award for Music and Lyrics. He is the producer and host of the YouTube program Lyrics to Go. With his father, Gabor, Daniel regularly co-leads the popular workshop Hello Again: A Fresh Start for Parents and Their Adult Children. He also runs a “mental chiropractic” service called Take a Walk with Daniel (walkwithdaniel.com).

Navigating junior year, Michie is struggling to answer the question of who she is for her scholarship essays, the only chance she has at making it into Brown as a first-generation college student. Or maybe it’s not so much that Michie doesn’t know who she is as it is that she doesn’t like who she is: having been estranged from her mother from the age of five and surrendered to her grandmother, Michie has made an art of hiding, especially from herself. After all, if her own mother doesn’t think she’s worthy of love, who will?
It’s fourteen-year-old Gabe Sweeney’s day to check for survivors . . . Two years after a global pandemic, twenty survivors (most of them children) have relocated from their coastal Maine island full of sad memories to a mansion on a small, neighboring island where they have school and farm chores. When Gabe and his dog, Mud, find Relle Douglas alone in the woods on the mainland, they take the strange new girl across the channel to live with them. Relle changes the island with her hopeful attitude. She tells big stories and makes plans for activities like talent shows. Despite a growing crush, Gabe doesn’t quite understand the point of it all; why have a talent show at the end of the world? But when tragedy strikes, Gabe sets out on a dangerous journey to try and find other survivors where the world might be normal. Like Before.