Where the Roots Reach for Water : A Personal & Natural - eBay (item 280412329324 end time Nov-18-09 09:08:09 PST)


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Item specifics - Nonfiction Books

Author:	Jeffery Smith	Publisher:	Farrar Straus & Giroux
ISBN-10:	0865475423	Subject:	Biography & Autobiography
ISBN-13:	9780865475427	Topic:	--
Format:	Hardcover	Language:	English
Publication Year:	1999	Condition:	Very Good
Special Attributes:	--

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Detailed item info

Synopsis
A memoir by a psychiatric caseworker who discontinues medication for depression and who inquires into the history of "melancholia," the medieval term some say is the equivalent of depression.
Size
Length:	292 pages
Height:	9.5 in.
Width:	6.5 in.
Thickness:	1.2 in.
Weight:	19.2 oz.

Publisher's Note
A memoir encompassing a rich sampling of mythology, natural history, biography, cultural studies, and iconography, this book tells what happens when a psychiatric case manager decides to stop taking antidepressants and get at the essence of melancholia. One writer's unorthodox path out of his devastating depression. Jeffery Smith was living in Missoula, Montana, and working as a psychiatric case manager when his daily cocktail of prescribed antidepressants threw him into a paralytic seizure. This book tells the story of what happened after Smith decided he had to stop taking pills. Trying to restore his life, he sets out to get at the essence of-using the old term for depression-melancholia. He uncovers a long history: melancholia has ancient links to spirituality, to love and sex, to music and philosophy, and, most important, to our relationship with landscapes. In tracing the "ecology" of his illness, Smith finds models among the hundreds of poets, naturalists, and saints who, before the psychopharmaceutical age, still lived creatively and productively with melancholia. What he learns utterly transforms his life. Smith surrenders his mental health career. A lifelong cynic, he finds faith and struggles to sustain it. He falls in love, and for the first time stays there. He mends fences with his family back in Appalachia. Where the Roots Reach for Water is a memoir that radiates out from autobiography to encompass a rich sampling of mythology, natural history, biography, cultural studies, and iconography that illuminates melancholia's sundry lives.
Industry reviews
"Smith writes beautifully and gracefully about a dire, frightening, terribly human condition. The result is an intriguing, quirky, flawed book. At times it is so self-absorberd that it is draining to read. In other places it is inspirational in a subversive, unconventional way. WHERE THE ROOTS REACH FOR WATER is really two books in one: memoir and natural history and it might have worked better in two separate parts. Braided together, there is a clash of styles between the lyricism of the memoir and the intellectual rigor of his observations. Even though it doesn't quite come off, it is refreshing to read a book about depression that concludes, "I had conquered nothing, mastered nothing, transcended nothing. I had simply settled into something that had been waiting for me - who knows how long? - and made the descent it seemed to require." To surrender to depression's deeper lessons is a radical notion. Leading to an odd sort of personal transformation. How much more imagination and courage this takes than the typical modern strategy of "getting back to normal" with pills." January Magazine - Margaret Gunning (02/20/2000) "Smith has made his peace with himself, and it is this acceptance, and the fullness it brings, that is the most profound lesson here." Bloomsbury Review

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Product Category : Books
ISBN : 0865475423
Title : Where the Roots Reach for Water : A Personal & Natural History of Melancholia
EAN : 9780865475427
Authors : Jeffery Smith
Binding : Hardcover
Publisher : North Point Press
Publication Date : 1999-08
Pages : 292
List Price (MSRP) : 24.00
Height : 1.0000 inches
Width : 6.4000 inches
Length : 9.4000 inches
Weight : 1.2000 pounds
Keywords : Special Needs, General, General AAS, Depression, Hardcover, Printed Books
Condition : Very Good

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Item location: Lawrence, Massachusetts, United States

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