Mental Health History

Great ideas often develop gradually after studying a problem at length--but not always. Sometimes an insight hits like a bolt from the blue. For Archimedes clarity struck while he was taking a bath. For Gustav Mahler it came as the blades of his oars touched the water. And for Albert Einstein, it emerged while he was talking to a friend.

Permanent Present Tense tells the incredible story of Henry Gustav Molaison, known only as H. M. until his death in 2008. In 1953, at the age of 27, Molaison underwent a dangerous "psychosurgical" procedure intended to alleviate his debilitating epilepsy. The surgery went horribly wrong, and when Molaison awoke he was unable to store new experiences. For the rest of his life, he would be trapped in the moment. But Molaison’s tragedy would prove a gift to humanity.

The unforgettable account of Del Seymour, who overcame 18 years of homelessness and addiction to become one of the most respected advocates in San Francisco In Mayor of the Tenderloin, journalist Alison Owings slips behind the cold statistics and sensationalism surrounding San Francisco’s...

A groundbreaking work by an internationally acclaimed forensic psychotherapist that looks at women who commit extreme acts of violence and cruelty and at the underlying oppression and abuse often at the heart of these crimes Women can be murderers and child abusers. They can commit acts of...

Some wars don't end, some scars don't heal, and some bonds can't be broken. Former US Army Ranger medic Leo Jenkins picks up where he left off with his bestselling book, Lest We Forget, to explore the tribulations associated with attempting to reintegrate back into society after years at war. In what is being considered one of the most significant introspective books on veteran transition issues ever written, Jenkins lays it all on the line one more time with On Assimilation: A Ranger's Return From War. Contains mature themes.

In the wake of World War II, the Allied forces charged 28 Japanese men with crimes against humanity. Correspondents at the Tokyo trial thought the evidence fell most heavily on 10 of the accused. In December 1948, five of these defendants were hanged, while four received sentences of life in prison. The tenth was a brilliant philosopher-patriot named Okawa Shumei. His story proved strangest of all. Among all the political and military leaders on trial, Okawa was the lone civilian.

Imagine you are nine years old. Your best friend’s father is arrested, half your classmates disappear from school, and someone burns down the house across the road. Imagine you have to cross a snow-covered mountain range at night in order to escape the soldiers who are trying to kill you. How would you deal with these memories once you are an adult? Jones, a relief worker and child psychiatrist, interviewed over 40 Serb and Muslim children who came of age during the Bosnian War and now returns, 20 years after the war began, to discover the adults they have become.

The vivid and emotional story of one soldier's heroic struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder.1944: Norm Bussel, an introspective and happy-go-lucky teen from Memphis, finds himself bailing out of a burning B-17 bomber just months after his 19th birthday. Touching-down in a field outside Berlin, Norm was immediately seized by local farmhands, who were in the process of lynching him when a passing German soldier put a stop to the execution.

The gripping, forgotten tale of Ira Hayes—a Native American icon and World War II legend who famously helped raise the flag at Iwo Jima but spent the latter half of his life haunted by being a war hero. IRA HAYES tells the story of Ira Hamilton Hayes from the perspective of a Native...

From the acclaimed author of The Shakespeare Wars and Explaining Hitler comes a stirring manifesto on love in the modern age. Who wrote the book of love? In an impassioned polemic, Ron Rosenbaum—who has written books on the mysteries of Hitler’s evil, the magic of Shakespeare’s words, and...

Head down the rabbit hole and feed your fascination for conspiracy and controversy. Conspiracy theories-they're influential and spread to sometimes irrational extremes. Why do people cling to conspiracy theories so powerfully? Is there a way to separate the possible from the impossible? Yes...

Making War at Fort Hood offers an illuminating look at war through the daily lives of the people whose job it is to produce it. Kenneth MacLeish conducted a year of intensive fieldwork among soldiers and their families at and around the US Army's Fort Hood in central Texas. He shows how war's reach extends far beyond the battlefield into military communities where violence is as routine, boring, and normal as it is shocking and traumatic.

By explaining how the human brain works and outing its most irrational processes, this book provides the thinking tools that will help you make better decisions, ask the right questions (at the right time), know what to look for when evaluating information, and understand how your own brain subconsciously clouds your judgment. Think you're too smart to be easily misled? Harrison summarizes scientific research showing how easily even intelligent and well-educated people can be fooled.

Art and science are famous opposites. Contemporary innovation mostly keeps them far apart. But in this book, David Edwards, world-renowned inventor; Harvard professor of the practice of idea translation; creator of breathable insulin, edible food packaging, and digital scents, reveals that the secret to creating very new things of lasting benefit, including innovations we will need to sustain human life on the planet, lies in perceiving art and science as one.

“A profoundly emotional book, and a brave one.” —The New Yorker A literary sensation in Brazil, Luiz Schwarcz’s brave and tender memoir interrogates his ordeal of bipolar disorder in the context of a family story of murder, dispossession, and silence—the long echo of the Holocaust...

Um andere zum Lachen zu bringen, kommt es besonders auf eine überraschende Komponente an – und wie wir alle wissen, lacht nicht jede und jeder über dieselben Witze, da ist Fingerspitzengefühl gefragt. Noch stärker ist das bei Ironie und Sarkasmus der Fall. Eines aber ist auf jeden Fall klar: Humor und Sachlichkeit schließen sich nicht aus, im Gegenteil: Gerade nüchterne Inhalte aus der Wissenschaft macht eine Prise Witz besser bekömmlich.

If you are among those who tremble and break into a sweat at the thought of facing an audience, or hesitate in offering an opinion, you are not alone. When this happens a few times, we begin to feel that spoken communication is not our forte and we begin to avoid it as far as possible, and when...

An insightful look at how cross-racial friendships work and fail within American society. In a U.S. national survey conducted for this book, 70% of respondents strongly agreed that friendships across racial lines are essential to making progress toward improving race relations. However, further...

From the author of the widely praised Raising America--a compelling exploration of child genius told through the gripping stories of fifteen exceptionally gifted boys and girls, from a math wonder a century ago to young jazz and classical piano virtuosos today. A thought-provoking book for a...

What is the relevance of morality today? Eden Collinsworth enlists the famous, the infamous, and the heretofore unheard-of to unravel how we make moral choices in an increasingly complex—and ethically flexible—age. To call these unsettling times is an understatement: our political leaders...