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Start giftingExuberance
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Learn moreWe have learned much about depression, but what about its opposite? Why hasn't the human emotion that lifts us, inspires us, drives us on, and makes life worth living been discussed-and celebrated? In this outstanding book, bestselling author Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison explores exuberance in all its unrestrained, joyful energy, and shows how its unique vitality is essential to our existence. Jamison points to the contagiousness of laughter, excitement, and positive feelings, and how it plays a role in choosing a mate, in the giddiness of new love, music, and religious ecstasy. She also discusses our dangerous desire to simulate exuberance by using drugs or alcohol. Most of all, Jamison points to some of our most famous artists and scientists to show how they all share an exuberance for life that inspires their discoveries, drives, and the force to persevere even when it seems the odds are against them.
Kay Redfield Jamison is the Dalio Family Professor in Mood Disorders and a professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, as well as an honorary professor of English at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She is the author of the national bestsellers An Unquiet Mind, Night Falls Fast, and Touched with Fire, and is coauthor of the standard medical text on manic-depressive illness, Manic-Depressive Illness: Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression. Dr. Jamison is a recipient of the Lewis Thomas Prize, the Rhoda and Barnard Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health from the National Academy of Medicine, and a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship.
Bernadette Dunne has been narrating for Books on Tape since 1997. She has been twice nominated for The Audie Award and has won six Golden Earphones awards. She studied at the Royal National Theatre in London and The Studio Theatre in Washington, DC. She has appeared at The Kennedy Center, The Washington Shakespeare Company, and Woolly Mammoth in Washington, DC. As a playwright, her work has been produced in New York, Seattle, and Washington, DC. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Reviews
“[Jamison is] that rare writer who can offer a kind of unified field theory of science and art.... The origins and mystery of creativity have long been her holy grail, and she argues—with her usual wit, ingenuity and panache—that exuberance is one of its wellsprings.” —The Washington Post Book World
“Fascinating reading.... On a subject that invites inflates prose, Jamison maintains a deft but not showy eloquence.... Trenchant and entertaining.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Jamison brilliantly conjures up characters.... A book on exuberance ought to be a romp to read. The one is.” —Los Angeles Times
“Jamison has a capacity for moving smoothly between tasty digressions, hard science and sweeping cultural analyses..... This reads like a book that was a long time in coming, written by one who came to appreciate the brightest sunlight only after becoming acquainted with the darkest nights.” —The Seattle Times