Tom Tiede is a cranky old man whose pet peeves would fill a menagerie.

A retired journalist who admits to 60, Tiede can't stand baby boomers, whom he contemptuously calls "Booms" and describes in overheated prose as "the first New World narcissistic class to have about it the full whiff of the armpit." He has no time for psychotherapists or for obtaining "professional help," since, after all, "'professionals' are merely people--they are as mystified by relationships as everyone else (except when they write books)." The Bible, religious belief and Christianity all attract his scorn. And he views lawyers as a special evil, "Jack Kevorkian in better suits."

But, as the full title of this self-indulgent rant suggests, Tiede hates self-help books most of all. And he's not shy about expressing his antipathy. "Self-improvement books are narcotics in ink," he declares in "Magic Bullets," the chapter that opens Self-Help Nation. "You'd do better selling crack than leafing through massifs of fix-up advice." In such books, he writes, "the inspiration is usually overestimated, the promise is usually broken." And, as for you, dear reader: "If you are simple enough to buy a self-help book, you may be congenitally programmed to fail."

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