Elizabeth Neswald, David F. Smith and Ulrike Thoms Setting Nutritional Standards: Theory, Policies, Practices (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2017), pp. vii230, £80/£19.99, hardback/ebook/ebook for handhelds, ISBN: 9781580465762 / 9781782049197 / 9781782049296.

of how social and individual problems epitomised by and articulated through exhaustion discourse can generate social changes and new forms of subjectivities. Each of the chapters is too short to offer substantial analyses of the subject if taken individually. Those that deal with history are at times too broad and lacking in context (especially Chapters 2 and 3), without much archival research, and some authors occasionally make debatable affirmations. For example, in Chapter 5, Wilmar B. Schiufeli equates Shakespeare’s use of ‘burn’d out’ in a sonnet with the ‘process of energy exhaustion in relation to love’ (p. 107), a complicated statement which over-simplifies the history of the concepts ‘energy’ and ‘exhaustion’, and their link to the industrial changes of the nineteenth century. This over-simplification can be understood given the fact that he is a sociologist, not a historian, but a suggestion for improvement would be to have included more historians amongst the authors of the book. Additionally, given the variety of interpretations of exhaustion, it would have been interesting to consider the extent to which it is a metaphor that goes beyond the human body; for instance, by considering issues of climate change and ecological sustainability (but perhaps this is a point for further research). Burnout, Fatigue, Exhaustion is a book to be read from cover to cover: as a whole, it serves as a very useful and thought-provoking introduction to a complicated subject. Even though there are only a handful of chapters specifically dedicated to the history of exhaustion syndromes, those that deal with other topics still present useful approaches and raise questions that would be of interest to historians of medicine, particularly those in the field of medical humanities. The different parts speak to each other in a cohesive way that demonstrates the depth of the subject and shows the value of using interdisciplinary approaches to tackle its issues, resembling other publications in the fields of the history of pain and emotions that have called for such approaches, including the work of Joanna Bourke and Rob Boddice. Many of the chapters thread historical analyses of neurasthenia, burn-out and treatments like amphetamines with present-day narratives of exhaustion, demonstrating the uses of incorporating history into other disciplinary approaches. Politically charged and methodologically varied, Burnout, Fatigue, Exhaustion is a useful introduction and point of departure for thinking about an old problem that affects us in new ways.