Am I Normal: The 200-Year Search for Normal People (and Why They Dont Exist)

(Paperback, Main)

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*As heard on BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour*
*A Blackwell's and Waterstones Best Popular Science Book of 2022*

'Excellent ... one of those rare pop-science books that make you look at the whole world differently' The Daily Telegraph *****
'Riveting' Mail on Sunday *****
'Captivating' Guardian, Book of the Day
'Compelling' Observer

Sarah Chaney takes us on an eye-opening and surprising journey into the history of science, revisiting the studies, landmark experiments and tests that proliferated from the early 19th century to find answers to the question: what's normal These include a census of hallucinations - and even a UK beauty map (which claimed the women in Aberdeen were "the most repellent"). On the way she exposes many of the hangovers that are still with us from these dubious endeavours, from IQ tests to the BMI.

Interrogating how the notion and science of standardisation has shaped us all, as individuals and as a society, this book challenges why we ever thought that normal might be a desirable thing to be.

Reviews

'Sarah Chaney charts, fascinatingly, [a] progressive creep of the idea of the "normal" into the heart of society... shocking and salutary' - The Times

'Compelling, highly readable ... Encompassing everything from sex surveys to baby weight, beauty standards to sexuality, this is a brilliantly engaging work of popular science' - Observer

'Captivating' - Book of the Day

'Eureka! Sarah Chaney's excellent Am I Normal is one of those rare pop-science books that make you look at the whole world differently' - Tim Smith-Laing

'Riveting ... The moral of the story, indeed of this engaging book, is that instead of ruminating endlessly on the worried (and unanswerable) question Am I Normal, we should be asking ourselves instead whether normal even exists and why, quite frankly, anyone cares' - Mail on Sunday, *****

Author Bio

Sarah Chaney is a research fellow at the Queen Mary Centre for the History of the Emotions. She spent her teens and twenties furiously rebelling against the mainstream, whilst secretly longing to be normal. It wasn't until she passed thirty that she (mostly) stopped worrying about this mythical ideal. Alongside her research work she runs the public exhibitions and events programme at the Royal College of Nursing, occasionally writes for The Conversation and Psychology Today and reads far too much X-Men fanfic.