Hyping Hope: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless is a no-holds-barred look at a phenomenon thatâs at the center of the devolution of todayâs American attitudes and values. In this important work, Author Steve Salerno will show how, far from just having an impact on individual disciples, the self-help movementâs unproven rhetoric has found its way into all contemporary institutions, including politics, academics, health care, corporate life, and even sports. Many of these so-called philosophies (collectively the ãSelf-Help and Actualization Movement, or SHAM) have been embraced into the social mainstream. The book exposes how SHAM has created its own class of perpetual victims: people for whom self-help is as addicting, and as much of a detour on the road to a productive life, as alcoholism, chronic infidelity, compulsiveness, ãcodependency,ä or the other hang-ups that typically drive one to seek SHAM enlightenment in the first place.