The Noonday Demon: Summary and book reviews of The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon, plus links to an excerpt from The Noonday Demon and a biography of Andrew Solomon.

With uncommon humanity, candor, wit, and erudition, award-winning author Andrew Solomon takes the reader 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. 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, policymakers and politicians, drug designers and philosophers, 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 had 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. The depth of human experience Solomon chronicles, the range of his intelligence, and his boundless curiosity and compassion will change the reader's view of the world.

Media Reviews

Library Journal This compassionate work that never simplifies complex matters is essential for all collections.   Kirkus Reviews A reader's guide to depression, hopelessly bleak yet heartbreakingly real. In this massive tome, Solomon (A Stone Boat) confronts the terrors of depression with a breadth both panoramic and precise. Adam Gopnik, author of Paris to the Moon Andrew Solomon's new book on the descent of melancholy is, strange as it sounds, charming, lively, intelligent, and, in its diligent fascination with what turns out to be a permanent feature of the human condition, never the least bit depressing. W. G. Sebald, author of The Emigrants The Noonday Demon explores the subterranean realms of an illness that is on the point of becoming endemic and that, 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. Martha Manning, Ph.D. Clinical psychologist and author of Undercurrents A Life Beneath the Surface Solomon is able to examine depression in its considerable darkness, with an unblinking look at its sometimes lethal agonies. His greatest brilliance, however, is in his capacity to consider depression in the light, to recognize that there are elements of the experience that challenge its sufferers to learn, to change, and to salvage joy wherever they may find it. Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence Andrew Solomon offers us a wrenchingly candid, fascinating, and exhaustive tour of one of the darker chambers of the human heart. Larry McMurtry, author of Lonesome Dove and The Last Picture Show Through his candor, intellectual elegance, and ultimately his human resilience, Solomon manages to write of traumas both deep and ordinary without leaving the reader traumatized. Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth and Promiscuities With unflinching humanity and empathy, Solomon has written a landmark work about the universal experience of chronic grief. The book is so beautifully documented and widely researched that it reinvigorates the dying tradition of the public intellectual. And for so many women who are the more likely gender to experience lasting depression, whose grief is so often trivialized, The Noonday Demon will be a valued sourcebook, even a lifeline. Kay Redfield Jamison, professor of psychiatry, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine The Noonday Demon is an eloquent, harrowing account of melancholy and dread. It informs deeply in every manner -- personal, scientific, historical, and political -- about the roots, experience, and treatment of clinical depression. It is an important book about suffering, but an even more important one about hope. James Watson, discoverer of DNA structure, Nobel Prize winner, and author of The Double Helix A brilliant, kaleidoscopic portrayal of the human experience of depression. William Styron, author of Darkness Visible and Sophie's Choice An amazingly rich and absorbing work....In its flow of insights and its scope -- encompassing not only the author's own ordeal but also keen inquiries into the biological, social, and political aspects of the illness -- The Noonday Demon has achieved a level of authority that should assure its place among the few indispensable works on depression. Harold Bloom, author of How to Read and Why and Shakespeare The Invention of the Human The Noonday Demon is immensely readable and should be universally useful. It is indeed an atlas of depression, sensitively chronicling the illness's characteristics, social and cultural history, modes of treatment, and prospects. What makes it remarkable is a highly individual blend of the personal and the dispassionate, the work of a benign intelligence. Louise Erdrich, author of Love Medicine and The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse Compulsively readable, harrowing, and helpful, The Noonday Demon is an act of redemption in an epidemic of sorrow. Edmund white, author of A Boy's Own Story and Flâneur 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.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated of 5 by Raymond Noas
Kudos ... to Andrew Solomon! It takes courage and then, wisdom to capture in the written form ... the different masks of depression. I found The Noonday Demon to be comprised of valuable insights and filled with tangible proof ... that a father's...   Read More

Rated of 5 by royal j. cumings
The Noonday Demon has helped me to corner some of my 'demons' and has helped me to better explain myself to psychiatrists, a problem I have had for years. The book is never pouty and never preachy. The Noonday Demon is so articulate on so many...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Melissa Padgett
I've suffered with depression most of my 49 years, and read many books on the subject. All pale in comparison to Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon. His deeply personal experiences with depression qualify him to speak empathetically, while his...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Anonymous
Even if you don't have the time or inclination to buy and read all 500+ pages of The Noonday Demon : An Atlas of Depression - I strongly recommend you take the time to read the first chapter at BookBrowse.com (click on the 'Excerpt' link just...   Read More

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