Blogroll

Book Review: Mental: Lithium, Love, and Losing My Mind by Jaime Lowe

It seems that memoirs about dealing with mental illness are becoming proportionately as ubiquitous as the conditions themselves. Searching “mental health” in Amazon’s biographies and memoirs category produces more than 5,000 results. At least anecdotally, such works coming into the mainstream seems to correspond with increasing public discussion of destigmatizing mental illness. In recounting her […]

Book Review: Beyond Bedlam’s Door by Mark Rubinstein

Although case studies are a well-recognized form of scholarship, in the nonfiction aisles of retail bookstores it can become a sobriquet for “war stories.” Their presence and popularity grew immensely with the popularity of books by neurologist Oliver Sacks. Many authors, though, have difficulty equalling his prowess.

Mark Rubinstein deftly avoids the many pitfalls of […]

Book Review: He Wanted the Moon by Mimi Baird

Over the decades, the mental health memoir has become almost a genre in and of itself. That isn’t to knock them. After all, a 1908 memoir, A Mind That Found Itself, remains in print today. And more recent works about depression (William Styron’s Darkness Visible), bipolar disorder (Marya Hornbacher’s Madness: A Bipolar Life) or schizophrenia […]

Book Review: A Hidden Madness by James T.R. Jones

It’s a question that appears on a number of state applications to obtain a license to practice law. Do you currently have any condition or impairment which, if left untreated, could affect the ability to practice law? While it seems simple, some of the questions it can raise are not. What are the chances someone […]

Book Review: Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So by Mark Vonnegut

There are certain books you read during your life that stick with you. For me, one of those is one I first read while still in college, Mark Vonnegut’s The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity. First published in 1975 (and reissued in 2002), the book is a frank and compelling story of a young […]