Kay Redfield Jamison, PhD, is the bestselling author of An Unquiet Mind, Touched with Fire, and other books. She is a professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and has been named a “Hero of Medicine” by Time.
The author succeeds nicely in her effort ``to make a literary, biographical, and scientific argument for a compelling association . . . between two temperaments--the artistic and the manic-depressive--and their relationship to the rhythms of the natural world.'' Jamison (psychiatry, Johns Hopkins Univ.) examines the lives of writers and artists afflicted with manic-depression, discussing at length the case of Lord Byron. In language comprehensible to the lay reader, she presents a thorough overview of current knowledge concerning the etiology, diagnosis, and treatment of this disorder, a topic also addressed, though in a less scientifically rigorous fashion, in D.J. Hershman and Julian Lieb's The Key to Genius (Prometheus Bks, 1988). The current work is recommended for all academic libraries; it will earn its keep in large and medium-sized public libraries as well.-- Mary Ann Hughes, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman
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