Using her powerful story telling techniques including her own experience from weight-loss surgery, O’Neil argues that the long-term solution to this societal problem includes its recognition, and plentiful use of the good human characteristics of kindness and compassion.

What O’Neil adroitly illustrates is that shame is often a lonely experience, which is perhaps why it is so easy to exploit it for profit.

The Shame Machine is not a diary of O’Neil’s grief but instead a data-driven, anecdote-fueled narrative of the multitude of human experiences that are targets for ridicule and others’ reward. She vividly portrays the indignities of poverty, addiction, aging, dementia and other conditions we all may face but hope to avoid, and she shows how the pain experienced by people with these afflictions can be used for others’ financial and social profits.

Confused.

O’Neil distinguishes between shame that 'punches down' and shame that 'punches up'.

... although it contains its fair share of pseudoscience-debunking, including an admirably lucid explanation of how diet programs massage statistics to artificially bolster their success rates, it is largely a work of social criticism.

... it’s not always so easy to follow her account of how the shame machines work, what they are, or what to do about them.

[A] wide-ranging, global consideration of shame.

Thought-provoking.

A thoughtful blend of social and biological science, history, economics, and sometimes contrarian politics..