“Lincoln came close to killing himself in January 1841.”

October 25, 2018

In Flourish, Martin Seligman uses Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill as examples of “severe depressives” who learned to function well even when they were massively depressed.  Shouldn’t more people learn how to do this?  Yes,  says Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association and founder … Read More

“To live the complete human catastrophe is terrible indeed, but to write about it?”

October 11, 2018

Karl Ove Knausgaard is a Norwegian writer who conducted a public experiment.  He wanted to see what would happen if he wrote honestly about his life, aiming to “penetrate that whole series of conceptions and ideas and images that hang like a sky above reality” in a … Read More

“In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of nation we are and what direction we want to move in.”

October 4, 2018

When it seems that division and anger characterize many so many conversations, it helps to look back to see how we made it through terrible times before.  This week’s quote comes from a speech given by Robert F. Kennedy three hours after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. … Read More

“Neuroscience has now provided preliminary confirmation that long-term meditators have structural differences in brain areas associated with metacognition and interoception.”

September 27, 2018

Would you like a guided tour through research on how the brain works?   This book is one of about eight published in 2018 that you might find exciting. I’m drawn to this topic because reading about neuroplasticity – the brain’s ability to change its structure and patterns … Read More

“The trends are also remarkably consistent: loneliness, depressive symptoms, major depressive episodes, anxiety, self-injury, and suicide are all on the rise, mostly since 2011.”

September 20, 2018

Today I heard Dr. Twenge give a presentation to college faculty members on the characteristics of people who were born after 1995. The questions that followed were remarkable for two reasons.  First, there was broad acceptance of her research-backed claim that our youngest students are experiencing a … Read More

“The courage to teach is the courage to keep one’s heart open . . .”

September 11, 2018

 The school year has just started, and I’ve begun to meet students who seem to have everything going for them and other students who seem to have the deck stacked against them. At this point, I don’t know how any of this will unfold, but I can … Read More

“There is something missing in our definition, vision, of a human being: the need to make.”

September 2, 2018

Frank Bidart, who won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, explores this “need to make” in the twenty-part poem “Advice to the Players.” Yes, that’s right: twenty parts. He’s known for psychological complexity and paradoxical observations, and this poem provides both.  For example, he writes, “Horrible … Read More

“By turning the experiment of life into a heroic task he was able to turn Walden from a philosophical tract of unattainable goals into a guide for the perplexed.”

August 19, 2018

Jeffrey Cramer argues that if you read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden as an autobiographical record, you are bound to be disappointed.  (After all, Thoreau was selective about what he included, and the bits he didn’t write about – such as having his sisters do his laundry – … Read More

“Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.”

August 11, 2018

Stating the premise of your work simply and clearly in the first sentence requires courage. Readers might say, “Is that all?”  Or, some might feel skeptical about your ability to show how an original story can follow from a classic premise that Kafka, Dante, and other masters … Read More

“You have to turn now to all the other wounded people around you, and find a way to connect with them.”

August 5, 2018

When Johann Hari comes to the final chapter in his book on depression, he offers the advice that he wishes he had received when he was diagnosed with clinical depression decades ago. He believes that instead of focusing on “chemical imbalances” we should focus on “power imbalances” … Read More

“As a refugee from Vietnam who grew up in a poor and violent area of Philadelphia, my life changed dramatically when I enrolled at Harvard College.”

July 30, 2018

When Due Quach was a new student at Harvard, she didn’t have much to add to her classmates’ conversations about their vacations.  She had never been on one.  Starting at age eight, she had worked almost every day at her family’s take-out restaurant, which was in a … Read More

“The waitress seemed to sense that this was not the moment to ask if they had everything they needed.”

July 23, 2018

Of course, the waitress was right: these people clearly didn’t have everything they needed. This is familiar territory for fans of Anne Tyler. We count on seeing an “eccentric ecosystem of relatives and neighbors” who aren’t getting the assurances, stability or respect they need. When the … Read More

“The one that was accepted would then be rewritten ten times as I received round after round of notes.”

July 13, 2018

I believe that everyone who is contemplating making a living as a writer should read “Nonfiction, an Introduction,” a short essay in This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. Ann Patchett describes being allowed to write one of ten ideas that she would present to her … Read More

“No other river in the world can match the Danube for the sheer historical richness of the cities and landscapes through which it passes.”

July 5, 2018

As an American, I haven’t thought much about the many roles that rivers have played in other parts of the world.  In The Danube: A Cultural History, Andrew Beattie argues convincingly that when travelling the Danube, you are taking not just a geographical journey, but a … Read More

“Constanze took to cutting his meat at table so he wouldn’t slice up his fingers.”

June 25, 2018

Mozart was famously fidgety – he constantly drummed his fingers and was unable to even wash his hands without pacing. Apparently, Mozart’s wife Constanze didn’t trust him with a knife because he was prone to injuring himself.  So, in addition to being one of the world’s greatest … Read More