(Penguin, $28)
If you sometimes suspect that our political leaders are nuts, Nassir Ghaemi has written just the book for you, said Stephen Lowman in The Washington Post. The Tufts University psychiatry professor believes you’re right, though there’s a twist: He contends that madness in a leader is actually a good thing. “In Ghaemi’s view, a leader who has managed a lifetime of mental highs and lows is better equipped to handle trying situations.” Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, for instance, were all superb leaders who suffered from sometimes debilitating mood disorders. Next year, when we’re grilling our 2012 presidential candidates about the economy or taxes, Ghaemi will probably be rooting for someone to also ask: “Do you ever have persistent sad, anxious, or empty feelings?”
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Too often, unfortunately, the argument just comes across as wishful thinking, said Michael Bond in New Scientist. Though it’s become fashionable these days for psychiatrists to “talk up the positive side of mental illness,” their case should be built on evidence rather than speculation. People who suffer depression are known to be more ruminative, but that hardly proves that Churchill’s depression was key to his acute assessment of the threat posed by Hitler. Even more troubling is that Ghaemi sometimes seems to be “shoehorning his protagonists” into characterizations that don’t fit. Richard Nixon, who exhibited paranoia consistent with bipolar disorder, is here identified as one of recent history’s more mentally stable leaders. Need I say more?
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Jaguar Land Rover’s cyber bailoutTalking Point Should the government do more to protect business from the ‘cyber shockwave’?
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”