The Noonday Demon

Description

WITH A NEW EPILOGUE BY THE AUTHOR The most affecting, intelligent, important and constructive book on depression there has ever been - a key text by a New Yorker writer who has not only experienced the depths of depression but has researched every aspect of it. WITH A NEW EPILOGUE BY THE AUTHOR Like Primo Levi's The Periodic Table, The Noonday Demon digs deep into personal history, as Andrew Solomon narrates, brilliantly and terrifyingly, his own agonising experience of depression. Solomon also portrays the pain of others, in different cultures and societies whose lives have been shattered by depression and uncovers the historical, social, biological, chemical and medical implications of this crippling disease. He takes us through the halls of mental hospitals where some of his subjects have been imprisoned for decades; into the research labs; to the burdened and afflicted poor, rural and urban. He talks to faith healers and voyages around the world in a quest for folk wisdom. He analyses the medications of today as well as reviewing the politics of diagnosis and treatment and, perhaps most significantly, he looks at the vital role of will and love in the process of recovery. **ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY**

Andrew Solomon holds a PhD in psychology from the University of Cambridge; is a professor of psychology at Columbia University and President of PEN American Center; and is a regular contributor to the Guardian, the New Yorker, and the New York Times. A lecturer and activist, he is the author of Far from the Tree- Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, which won the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and many other awards; and The Noonday Demon- An Atlas of Depression, which won the National Book Award, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and has been published in twenty-four languages. His TED talks have been viewed over 12 million times. A dual UK/US national, he lives in London and New York. www.andrewsolomon.com.

The best book ever on depression. Andrew Solomon explains everything with a sharp, scientific clarity. -- William Leith * Evening Standard * The history, treatment and even politics of depression are thoroughly covered... Solomon's brutal honesty makes this the best account of depression I have ever read. -- Chris Nancollas * Tablet * A mesmerising journey... magnificent * Observer * Extraordinary and redeeming... A work of great charm and individuality but also of impressive scholarship * Evening Standard * A lodestone work * Guardian *