Download Exuberance: The Passion for Life AudioBook Free
The writer of the bestselling 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 for posterity 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 so many more examples both human and animal define the type of exuberance, and how this exuberance pertains to intellectual searching, risk-taking, creativity, and survival itself. She examines the hereditary predisposition to exuberance; the role of the brain chemical dopamine; the bond between positive moods and psychological resilience; and the dissimilarities 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 need to simulate exuberance by using drugs or alcohol. In a fascinating and intimate coda to all of those other book, renowned scientists, writers, and politicians share their thoughts on the forms and role of exuberance in their own lives.
Original, inspiring, authoritative, Exuberance brims with the very drive and desire it celebrates.
