The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression - Softcover

Solomon, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501123882 ISBN 13: 9781501123887

Publisher: Scribner Book Company, 2015

Synopsis

Andrew Solomon's National Book Award-winning, bestselling, and transformative masterpiece on depression--"the book for a generation, elegantly written, meticulously researched, empathetic, and enlightening" (Time)--now with a major new chapter covering recently introduced and novel treatments, suicide and anti-depressants, pregnancy and depression, and much more.

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 as well as the reasons for hope. He confronts the challenge of defining the illness and describes the vast range of available medications and 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 biological explanations for mental illness. With uncommon humanity, candor, wit and erudition, award-winning author Solomon takes readers on a journey of incomparable 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.

About this title

Review:

"Breakdowns are preposterous" writes Andrew Solomon in his wide-ranging and illuminating study, The Noonday Demon: An Anatomy of Depression. With the current vogue for self-help books, medication doled out at the drop of a hat, and therapy-speak, it would seem that depression is a modern phenomenon, a reaction to the stresses of a consumerist, high-achieving world. Yet as Solomon explains, the word " depression" was "first used in English to describe low spirits in 1660"; prior to this time, the vagaries of the unquiet mind were termed "melancholia". Bravely cataloguing his own series of depressive episodes, Solomon attempts to go to the roots of the illness--for an illness it is, and has to be treated as such--by interviewing fellow sufferers, delving back into history ("the history of depression in the West is closely tied to the history of Western thought")--analysing suicide, addictions, treatments, and depression's underlying causes, from politics to poverty. At the heart of this informed, compassionate book lies Solomon's own story--an established writer with seemingly everything going for him, he succumbed to a series of breakdowns in his 31st year, and eventually rallied with the support of his father, other family members and friends, a good therapist and a shopping list of medications, which he still takes daily. Out of his depression emerged qualities of self he never knew existed, and a desire to "find and cling to the reasons for living". Solomon's dark night of the soul, on a par with Lewis Wolpert's Malignant Sadness is a significant and important chronicle. Between 10 and 15 per cent of Americans and up to 6 million people in the UK experience depression; books like The Noonday Demon might just broaden our understanding of it. --Catherine Taylor

Review:

"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."--Richard Bernstein, The New York Times

"The Noonday Demon is the ideal and definitive book on depression. There is nothing falsely consoling about this account, which is the opposite of a bromide, unless to be accompanied by so much intelligence and understanding is a consolation in itself."--Edmund White, author of A Boy's Own Story and The Flaneur

"An exhaustively researched, provocative, and often deeply moving survey of depression. . . . original and vividly recounted, Solomon writes engagingly; his style is intimate and anecdotal. . . witty and persuasive. Overall. . . The Noonday Demon is a considerable accomplishment. It is likely to provoke discussion and controversy, and its generous assortment of voices, from the pathological to the philosophical, makes for rich, variegated reading."--Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review

"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."--Christine Whitehouse, Time

"Both heartrending and fascinating . . . the book has a scope and passionate intelligence that give it intrigue as well as heft."--Gail Caldwell, The Boston Globe

"The Noonday Demon explores the subterranean realms of an illness which is on the point of becoming endemic, and which more than anything else mirrors the present state of our civilization and its profound discontents. As wide-ranging as it is incisive, this astonishing work is a testimony both to the muted suffering of millions and to the great courage it must have taken the author to set his mind against it."--W. G. Sebald, author of The Emigrants

"It's a compendium, it's a think piece; it's both! . . . Remarkable . .. [Solomon] has a killer eye for detail, as well as curiosity and compassion."--Emily Nussbaum, The Village Voice

"A wrenchingly candid, fascinating, and exhaustive tour of one of the darker chambers of the human heart."--Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence

"Everyone will find a piece of himself in Solomon's account, even if he has been spared the experience of watching that kernel blossom into a monstrous and strangling plant. . . . Solomon shows bravery and rigor."--Christopher Caldwell, Slate magazine

"Exhaustive and eloquent."--Maria Russo, Salon.com

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1501123882
• ISBN 13: 9781501123887
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 688