Stuff
Adobe DRM
Product Details
Scribner, November 2011
eBook, 576 pages
ISBN-10: 1451676883
ISBN-13: 9781451676884
Awards and Nominations
- National Book Award Finalist
Description
The Noonday Demon examines depression in personal, cultural, and scientific terms. Drawing on his own struggles with the illness and interviews with fellow sufferers, doctors and scientists, policy makers and politicians, drug designers and philosophers, Andrew Solomon reveals the subtle complexities and sheer agony of the disease. He confronts the challenge of defining the illness and describes the vast range of available medications, the efficacy of alternative treatments, and the impact the malady has on various demographic populations -- around the world and throughout history. He also explores the thorny patch of moral and ethical questions posed by emerging biological explanations for mental illness. With uncommon humanity, candor, wit, and erudition, award-winning author Solomon takes readers on a journey of incom-parable range and resonance into the most pervasive of family secrets. His contribution to our understanding not only of mental illness but also of the human condition is truly stunning.
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Table of ContentsRichard Bernstein The New York Times All encompassing, brave, and deeply humane...It is open-minded, critically informed, and poetic at the same time, and despite the nature of its subject it is written with far too much élan and elegance ever to become depressing itself.
Gail Caldwell The Boston Globe Both heartrending and fascinating...the book has a scope and passionate intelligence that give it intrigue as well as heft.
Christine Whitehouse Time The book for a generation...Solomon interweaves a personal narrative with scientific, philosophical, historical, political, and cultural insights...The result is an elegantly written, meticulously researched book that is empathetic and enlightening, scholarly and useful...Solomon apologizes that "no book can span the reach of human suffering." This one comes close.
Daniel Golemanauthor of Emotional IntelligenceAndrew Solomon offers us a wrenchingly candid, fascinating, and exhaustive tour of one of the darker chambers of the human heart.
James Watsondiscoverer of DNA structure, Nobel Prize winner, and author of The Double HelixA brilliant, kaleidoscopic portrayal of the human experience of depression.
William Styronauthor of Darkness Visible and Sophie's ChoiceAn amazingly rich and absorbing work....In its flow of insights and its scope -- encompassing not only the author's own ordeal but also keen inquiries into the biolog- ical, social, and political aspects of the illness
-- The Noonday Demon has achieved a level of authority that should assure its place among the few indispensable works on depression.
Harold Bloomauthor of How to Read and Why and Shakespeare: The Invention of the HumanThe Noonday Demon is immensely readable and should be universally useful. It is indeed an atlas of depression, sensitively chronicling the illness's characteristics, social and cultural history, modes of treatment, and prospects. What makes it remarkable is a highly individual blend of the personal and the dispassionate, the work of a benign intelligence.
Louise Erdrichauthor of Love Medicine and The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No HorseCompulsively readable, harrowing, and helpful, The Noonday Demon is an act of redemption in an epidemic of sorrow.
Larry McMurtryauthor of Lonesome Dove and The Last Picture ShowThrough his candor, intellectual elegance, and ultimately his human resilience, Solomon manages to write of traumas both deep and ordinary without leaving the reader traumatized.
Naomi Wolfauthor of The Beauty Myth and PromiscuitiesWith unflinching humanity and empathy, Solomon has written a landmark work about the universal experience of chronic grief. The book is so beautifully documented and widely researched that it reinvigorates the dying tradition of the public intellectual. And for so many women who are the more likely gender to experience lasting depression, whose grief is so often trivialized, The Noonday Demon will be a valued sourcebook, even a lifeline.
Adam Gopnikauthor of Paris to the MoonAndrew Solomon's new book on the descent of melancholy is, strange as it sounds, charming, lively, intelligent, and, in its diligent fascination with what turns out to be a permanent feature of the human condition, never the least bit depressing.
Kay Redfield Jamisonprofessor of psychiatry, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and author of An Unquiet Mind and Night Falls FastThe Noonday Demon is an eloquent, harrowing account of melancholy and dread. It informs deeply in every manner -- personal, scientific, historical, and political
-- about the roots, experience, and treatment of clinical depression. It is an important book about suffering, but an even more important one about hope.
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, October 12, 2009
...WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 — The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is pleased to announce the election of Andrew Solomon to its board. The election occurred at the organization’s September meeting in Denver, Colo. The Task Force is the oldest ...
Andrew Solomon's Books
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Far From the TreeFor fans of The Tipping Point and The Emperor of All Maladies, a book about the impact of personal/cultural difference between parents and children.Read More
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