Andrew Solomon

Winner of the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, 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.

An Atlas of Depression

The Noonday Demon

Annabelle Gauthier

“I teach them that these three skills—forgetting, working, and loving—are not three separate skills, but part of one enormous whole, and that it is the practice of these things together, each as a part of the others, that makes a difference. It is the hardest thing to convey”—she laughed—“but they all come to understand this, and when they do—why, then they are ready to go into the world again.”

I regret everything just because it is finished, … it’s always been as though I wrestle with the present in a vain effort to stop its becoming the past.

The Noonday Demon quotes

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