Michael Fellman
With brilliance and courage, Ghaemi explores the relationship of mental illness to creative leadership in times of crisis. He explains with great clarity the myriad meanings of mood disorder and other illnesses, and ties this analysis to compassionate historical discussions of many of the mostand leastsuccessful major leaders of the past two hundred years. This is a first-rate book. (Michael Fellman, Professor Emeritus of History at Simon Fraser University; author of Citizen Sherman and In the Name of God and Country)
Paul Johnson
Nassir Ghamei's book is a provocative examination of the link between leadership, depression and mania. It will arouse enormous interest, together with anger and disagreement, and many people will want to read it. (Paul Johnson, author of Churchill, A History of the American People, and Modern Times)
Stephen Kinzer
No one who reads this brilliantly insightful book will ever look at history or politics the same way. Ghaemi uses his deep knowledge of medicine and psychiatry to take readers on a fascinating voyage into the minds of great leaders. His conclusions are startling, provocative, disturbing and deeply persuasive. (Stephen Kinzer, author of Reset, Overthrow and All the Shah's Men)
Joshua Wolf Shenk
Considered together, and with such rigor and clarity as they are here, these stories are staggering. If so many leaders have suffered so hard, we may well ask: What is 'mental health' anyway? Certainly, we need to reconsider sentimental notions of greatness and heroism. With deft use of biographical and psychiatric detail, Ghaemi exposes a central current of human experience that badly needs this kind of careful and sensitive attention. (Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of Lincoln's Melancholy)
Thomas Moore
Plato said it first: We all have a degree of madness that can serve our creativity. Nassir Ghaemi has said it again in the language of psychiatry, in a book that is so well written and so full of engaging stories that you'll want to embrace his point of view. Dr. Ghaemi turns upside down our usual way of seeing. You will enjoy this challenging book and be thrown into wonder about the value of sanity and the perverse gifts of neurosis. (Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul and Care of the Soul in Medicine)
Daniel Dennett
Nassir Ghaemi reinvents psychohistory as a serious form of scientific inquiry. Along the way, he presents a bounty of startling facts about some of history's great heroes and villains. Under his highly informed and skeptical gaze, our burnished iconsLincoln and Sherman, Churchill and Hitler, Kennedy and Nixon, and othersare in for some serious resculpting. (Daniel Dennett, Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University; author of Breaking the Spell, Freedom Evolves, and Darwin's Dangerous Idea)