What's the Catch? How to Avoid Getting Hooked and Manipulated, explores the ways in which our thinking, feelings, and behavior are influenced by those around us. Sometimes this kind of influence is helpful, but at other times it ends up "shortchanging" us. Readers will learn to distinguish between the two kinds of situations, so that they can more easily tell when they're really being helped, and when they're merely being manipulated, brainwashed, or tricked. Written in a clear and accessible style by physician David Sobel, What's the Catch? is illustrated by Jeff Jackson with an engaging and multiethnic cast of teen characters, who act out and embody the various ways in which we're influenced by others. Readers will learn to become more aware of the forces nudging and pushing them, as well as how to protect themselves from unwanted and unhelpful influence. By coming to understand their own reaction patterns, they'll be able to avoid getting "hooked."