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Exuberance: The Passion for Life By Kay Redfield Jamison ( Vintage )
Release Date: 2005-09-13
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List Price: $14.95
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Product Description
With the same grace and breadth of learning she brought to her studies of the mind’s pathologies, Kay Redfield Jamison examines one of its most exalted states: exuberance. This “abounding, ebullient, effervescent emotion” manifests itself everywhere from child’s play to scientific breakthrough and is crucially important to learning, risk-taking, social cohesiveness, and survival itself.
Exuberance: The Passion for Life introduces us to such notably irrepressible types as Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, and Richard Feynman, as well as Peter Pan, dancing porcupines, and Charles Schulz’s Snoopy. It explores whether exuberance can be inherited, parses its neurochemical grammar, and documents the methods people have used to stimulate it. The resulting book is an irresistible fusion of science and soul.
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 Outward and Upward ( shalomfn )
Jamison writes near the opening of this work, "Exuberance is an abounding, ebullient, effervescent emotion. It is kinetic and unrestrained , joyful , irrepressible." She tells us Exuberance "lures us from common places and quieter moods." It "carries us to places we would not otherwise go".
Here she studies examples of Exuberance from a wide variety of areas of life. There are politicians like T.R. F.D.R. and Winston Churchill. There are scientists like James Watson and Richard Feynmann. She looks at legendary characters like 'Snowflake' Bentley whose enthusiasm and passion for a wonder of nature led him to become the world's great expert and student of it. Perhaps because she has written of Literary figures and creativity in another work she does not focus on Literary figures here.
She does however repeatedly show us how 'exuberance' moves towards greater creativity and towards real expansion of self and world. Jamison is an excellent, and learned writer with an ability to study both the natural and human worlds and make them come alive for the reader. I learned a great deal from this work, and I believe all interested in human life and character have much to learn from it.
I have a certain reservation about the book which may say more about me than the book itself. Though the book is about 'Exuberance' and gives wonderful examples of how exuberance has moved others in life- the feeling in reading the work for me was not 'exuberance'. Some times one reads and one feels one is on a great adventure and opening up new worlds. Here I no doubt was learning new things, but I did not feel the great joy of exuberance. I did feel that when reading Jamison's most well- known work her great memoir 'An Unquiet Mind'. But this is perhaps because that book treated a subject , 'Manic-Depression', which meant so much to me personally, and I felt was being illuminated in remarkably new and yet familiar way.
In any case this is a book which hopefully will inspire many to better feeling about themselves and their own personal adventures.
While reading it I kept thinking of this verse from Emily Dickenson.
"Exulation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea
Past the houses , Past the headlands
Into Deep Eternity.
Bred as we among the mountains
Can the sailor understand
The Divine Intoxication
Of the First Leagues out from Land?"
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A must read . . . . ( echephzibah2002 )
You must read it to know how wonderful it is. Yes, I know that is vague, but this book is well worth the investment.
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She did it again! ( dr_amygdala )
Absolutely beautiful. Jamison has a really wonderful way of drawing you into her writing. Not an easy feat, especially in nonfiction, non-memoir genres. But Jamison's writing style, her descriptions, and her beautiful language almost suggest a style similar to Jeannette Winterson and other fiction authors, while still bringing the credibility that Jamison has, by virtue of her other books, her own experience, and her education/training/experience with clients.
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Passion is for LIfe ( chelan4life )
This refreshing book about passion is welcome as it characterizes some behavior what others might think was excessive as exuberance. A nice shift in perspective with a positive spin. Sees bi polar activity as many faceted and differing in each person
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Get on with it! ( mqd@gadean.com )
I have yet to finish the book but within pages I was both crying and laughing from the EXUBERANCES of the folks highlighted. This is a great reminder to get on with it and stop taking yourself so seriously. I am giving it to many in my family for Christmas.
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