The Warner Boys: Our Family’s Story of Autism and Hope


Curt Warner - 2018
    When they dropped from the public eye after Curt’s retirement, everyone assumed it was for a simpler life. But the reality behind their seclusion was a secret they hid from even their closest friends: their twins, Austin and Christian, had been diagnosed with severe autism. What followed was a painful struggle to hold their family and their marriage together in a home filled with chaos, emotional exhaustion, and constant fear for the safety of their unpredictable but beloved boys.Now, after years of silence, the Warners share their inspiring journey from stardom and success to heartbreaking self-imposed isolation. Above all, it’s a story of the life-changing truth that love for family and each other—no matter how challenged—is the path to healing and peace.The Warner Boys is the true story of a family who fought for their children and how they grew stronger against all odds.

Like Falling Through a Cloud: A Lyrical Memoir


Eugenia Zukerman - 2019
    Touching, honest, and fearlessly heartfelt, Like Falling Through a Cloud recounts Zukerman’s discovery, consultations, and diagnosis, all while navigating the death of her 103-year-old mother, a performance at the Kennedy Center, and the consolidation of her life via a full-time move to upstate New York. As she finds strength in family love, self-examination, and the enduring power of creating music, Zukerman teaches us the importance of living in the now, while accepting that what comes next may remain a mystery.

The Shaking Woman, or A History of My Nerves


Siri Hustvedt - 2009
    Despite her flapping arms and shaking legs, she continued to speak clearly and was able to finish her speech. It was as if she had suddenly become two people: a calm orator and a shuddering wreck. Then the seizures happened again and again. The Shaking Woman tracks Hustvedt’s search for a diagnosis, one that takes her inside the thought processes of several scientific disciplines, each one of which offers a distinct perspective on her paroxysms but no ready solution. In the process, she finds herself entangled in fundamental questions: What is the relationship between brain and mind? How do we remember? What is the self?During her investigations, Hustvedt joins a discussion group in which neurologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and brain scientists trade ideas to develop a new field: neuropsychoanalysis. She volunteers as a writing teacher for psychiatric in-patients at the Payne Whitney clinic in New York City and unearths precedents in medical history that illuminate the origins of and shifts in our theories about the mind-body problem. In The Shaking Woman, Hustvedt synthesizes her experience and research into a compelling mystery: Who is the shaking woman? In the end, the story she tells becomes, in the words of George Makari, author of Revolution in Mind, “a brilliant illumination for us all.”

Depression Hates a Moving Target: How Running With My Dog Brought Me Back From the Brink


Nita Sweeney - 2019
    Using exercise, Nita discovered an inner strength she didn’t know she possessed, and with the help of her canine companion, she found herself on the way to completing her first marathon. In her memoir, Sweeney shares how she overcame emotional and physical challenges to finish the race and come back from the brink.There’s hope and help on the track: Anyone who has struggled with depression knows the ways the mind can defeat you. However, it is possible to transform yourself with the power of running. You may learn that you can endure more than you think, and that there’s no other therapy quite like pavement beneath your feet.Depression Hates a Moving Target is a witty and poignant story of rediscovery. Whether you’re born to run or just looking for rebirth, you will: Be inspired by the powerful story of one woman―and her dog Cheer on Nita as she endures the challenges of a marathon and a mind in turmoil And discover the power of running to overcome obstaclesIf you loved Let Your Mind Run, you’ll love Depression Hates a Moving Target: How Running With My Dog Brought Me Back from the Brink.

Slow Dancing with a Stranger: Lost and Found in the Age of Alzheimer's


Meryl Comer - 2014
    With harrowing honesty, she brings readers face to face with this devastating condition and its effects on its victims and those who care for them. Detailing the daily realities and overwhelming responsibilities of caregiving, Comer sheds intensive light on this national health crisis, using her personal experiences—the mistakes and the breakthroughs—to put a face to a misunderstood disease, while revealing the facts everyone needs to know.Pragmatic and relentless, Meryl has dedicated herself to fighting Alzheimer’s and raising public awareness. “Nothing I do is really about me; it’s all about making sure no one ends up like me,” she writes. Deeply personal and illuminating, Slow Dancing With a Stranger offers insight and guidance for navigating Alzheimer’s challenges. It is also an urgent call to action for intensive research and a warning that we must prepare for the future, instead of being controlled by a disease and a healthcare system unable to fight it.

Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness


Joshua Wolf Shenk - 2005
     Giving shape to the deep depression that pervaded Lincoln's adult life, Joshua Wolf Shenk's Lincoln's Melancholy reveals how this illness influenced both the president's character and his leadership. Lincoln forged a hard path toward mental health from the time he was a young man. Shenk draws from historical record, interviews with Lincoln scholars, and contemporary research on depression to understand the nature of his unhappiness. In the process, he discovers that the President's coping strategies—among them, a rich sense of humor and a tendency toward quiet reflection—ultimately helped him to lead the nation through its greatest turmoil.

Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness


Tracy Kidder - 2000
    Strength in What Remains is a wonderfully written, inspiring account of one man’s remarkable American journey and of the ordinary people who helped him – a brilliant testament to the power of will and of second chances. Deo arrives in America from Burundi in search of a new life. Having survived a civil war and genocide, plagued by horrific dreams, he lands at JFK airport with two hundred dollars, no English, and no contacts. He ekes out a precarious existence delivering groceries, living in Central Park, and learning English by reading dictionaries in bookstores. Then Deo begins to meet the strangers who will change his life, pointing him eventually in the direction of Columbia University, medical school, and a life devoted to healing. Kidder breaks new ground in telling this unforgettable story as he travels with Deo back over a turbulent life in search of meaning and forgiveness. An extraordinary writer, Tracy Kidder once again shows us what it means to be fully human by telling a story about the heroism inherent in ordinary people, a story about a life based on hope.

Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me: Depression in the First Person


Anna Mehler Paperny - 2019
    Illuminating, completely engaging—it's essential reading for all since we all know someone whose life, family or friends are touched by the disease that directly afflicts a fifth of Canadians. In her early twenties, while outwardly thriving in her dream job and enjoying warm familial support and a strong social network, award-winning journalist Anna Mehler Paperny found herself trapped by feelings of failure and despair. Her first suicide attempt—ingesting a deadly mix of sleeping pills and antifreeze—landed her in the ICU, followed by weeks of enforced detention that ran the gamut of horrifying, boring, hilarious, and absurd. This was Anna's entry into the labyrinthine psychiatric care system responsible for providing care to millions of Canadians.As she struggled to survive the psych ward and as an outpatient—enduring the "survivor's" shame of facing concerned family, friends, and co-workers; finding (or not) the right therapist, the right meds; staying healthy, insured, and employed—Anna could not help but turn her demanding journalist's eye on her condition and on the system in which she found herself. She set off on a quest to "know her enemy," interviewing leading practitioners in the field across Canada and the US—from psychiatrists to neurological experts, brain-mapping pioneers to heroic family practitioners, and others dabbling in novel hypotheses. She reveals in courageously frank detail her own experiences with the pharmacological pitfalls and side effects of long-term treatment, and offers moving case studies of conversations with others, opening wide a window into how we treat (and fail to treat) the disease that accounts for more years swallowed up by disability than any other in the world.

American Pain: How a Young Felon and His Ring of Doctors Unleashed America's Deadliest Drug Epidemic


John Temple - 2015
    From a fortress-like former bank building, American Pain's doctors distributed massive quantities of oxycodone to hundreds of customers a day, mostly traffickers and addicts who came by the vanload. Inked muscle-heads ran the clinic's security. Former strippers operated the pharmacy, counting out pills and stashing cash in garbage bags. Under their lab coats, the doctors carried guns and it was all legal sort of. American Pain was the brainchild of Chris George, a 27-year-old convicted drug felon. The son of a South Florida home builder, Chris George grew up in ultra-rich Wellington, where Bill Gates, Springsteen, and Madonna kept houses. Thick-necked from weightlifting, he and his twin brother hung out with mobsters, invested in strip clubs, brawled with cops, and grinned for their mug shots. After the housing market stalled, a local doctor clued in the brothers to the burgeoning underground market for lightly regulated prescription painkillers. In Florida, pain clinics could dispense the meds, and no one tracked the patients. Seizing the opportunity, Chris George teamed up with the doctor, and word got out. Just two years later Chris had raked in $40 million, and 90 percent of the pills his doctors prescribed flowed north to feed the rest of the country's insatiable narcotics addiction. Meanwhile, hundreds more pain clinics in the mold of American Pain had popped up in the Sunshine State, creating a gigantic new drug industry. American Pain chronicles the rise and fall of this game-changing pill mill, and how it helped tip the nation into its current opioid crisis, the deadliest drug epidemic in American history. The narrative swings back and forth between Florida and Kentucky, and is populated by a gaudy and diverse cast of characters. This includes the incongruous band of wealthy bad boys, thugs and esteemed physicians who built American Pain, as well as penniless Kentucky clans who transformed themselves into painkiller trafficking rings. It includes addicts whose lives were devastated by American Pain's drugs, and the federal agents and grieving mothers who labored for years to bring the clinic's crew to justice."

The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression


Andrew Solomon - 2000
    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.

Hyper-Chondriac: One Man's Quest to Hurry Up and Calm Down


Brian Frazer - 2007
    The Esquire and Vanity Fair humor columnist wipes out on the road to Wellville in this bitingly funny memoir about one man's frantic lifelong search for inner peace.

All Natural: A Skeptic's Quest for Health and Happiness in an Age of Ecological Anxiety


Nathanael Johnson - 2013
    This ecological anxiety has polarized a new generation of Americans: many are drawn to natural solutions and organic lifestyles, while others rally around high-tech development and industrial efficiencies. Johnson argues that both views, when taken to extremes, can be harmful, even deadly.Johnson, raised in the crunchy-granola epicenter of Nevada City, California, lovingly and rigorously scrutinizes his family's all-natural mindset, a quest that brings him into the worlds of an outlaw midwife, radical doctors, renegade farmers and one hermit forester. Along the way, he uncovers paradoxes at the heart of our ecological condition: Why, even as medicine improves, are we becoming less healthy? Why are more American women dying in childbirth? Why do we grow fatter the more we diet? Why have so many attempts to save the environment backfired?In this sparklingly intelligent, wry, and scrupulously reported narrative, Johnson teases fact from faith and offers a rousing and original vision for a middle ground between natural and technological solutions that will assuage frustrated environmentalists, perplexed parents, and confused consumers alike.

I Really Didn't Think This Through: Tales from My So-Called Adult Life


Beth Evans - 2018
    The book is a wonderful mix of fun (playful meditations on the band Rush and international pen-pals) and thoughtful (Beth delves into her personal history with obsessive compulsive disorder and depression while commiserating on topics like dating and credit card shame) all with a simple candor that anyone from a teen to their grandparent can relate to. Through all of her experiences, Beth manages to extract valuable lessons, and the book is replete with friendly advice about caring for yourself, getting help no matter what your problems are, and embracing what makes you happy. Beth is a compelling storyteller, her drawings picking up where her words leave off, creating an approachable and immersive experience for the reader. Beth’s work feels like a hug from your best friend. And like a best friend, she’s here to say “You got this!”

How I Got My Wiggle Back: A Memoir of Healing


Anthony Field - 2011
    Their extraordinary success over the last twenty years includes TV shows, the sale of tens of millions of CDs and DVDs, and sell-out live performances for a million people annually as well as honors including being named UNICEF goodwill ambassadors. Now, for the first time, Anthony Field, the "blue" Wiggle, tells his inspiring, behind-the-scenes story of how he overcame depression, life-threatening illness, and chronic pain to get his life back.Takes you inside the life of the Wiggles' co-founder Anthony Field and the story of his successful struggle to overcome debilitating emotional and physical health challengesShares practical action steps to help relieve pain, prevent and heal disease, and achieve peak fitness regardless of ageReveals groundbreaking approaches to wellness developed by two acclaimed chiropractorsIncludes more than seventy photographs from Anthony Field's personal collection

The Antelope in the Living Room: The Real Story of Two People Sharing One Life


Melanie Shankle - 2014
    Marriage is simultaneously the biggest blessing and the greatest challenge two people can ever take on. It is the joy of knowing there is someone to share in your joys and sorrows, and the challenge of living with someone who thinks it's a good idea to hang a giant antelope head on your living room wall. In The Antelope in the Living Room, New York Times best-selling author and blogger Melanie Shankle does for marriage what Sparkly Green Earrings did for motherhood--makes us laugh out loud and smile through tears as she shares the holy and the hilarity of that magical and mysterious union called marriage.