Exuberance: The Passion for Life

The author of the best-selling "An Unquiet Mind--and internationally renowned authority on mood disorders--now gives us something wonderfully different: an exploration of exuberance and how it fuels our most important creative and scientific achievements. John Muir's lifelong passion to save America's wild places, Wilson Bentley's legendary obsession to record the beauty of individual snowflakes, the boundless scientific curiosity behind Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA, sea lions that surf and porcupines that dance--Kay Redfield Jamison shows how these and many more examples define the nature of exuberance, and how this exuberance relates to intellectual searching, risk-taking, creativity, and survival itself. She examines the hereditary predisposition to exuberance; the role of the brain chemical dopamine; the connection between positive moods and physical health; and the differences between exuberance and mania. She delves into some of the phenomena of exuberance--the contagiousness of laughter, the giddiness of new love, the intoxicating effects of music and of religious ecstasy--while also addressing the dangerous desire to simulate exuberance by using drugs or alcohol. In a fascinating counter point, renowned scientists, writers, and politicians share their thoughts on the roles of exuberance in their own lives. Original, inspiring, authoritative, "Exuberance brims with the very energy and passion that it celebrates.