Exuberance: The Passion for Life

by Kay Redfield Jamison

Book Overview

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,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 037540144X
• ISBN13: 9780375401442
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.8" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Good Condition | Worst Among Her Books

Book was in good condition exactly as described. However, content wise, this is definitely the most uninteresting and poorly written book I have read from Kay Redfield Jamison. Her works about the other end of the spectrum are way more superior.

Exuberant Advocate

A poetic history of the exuberant passion that leads to invention, creative thought, and scientific progress. Kay Jamison, as one who suffers from manic depression, advocates for the overlooked importance of obsessions that, at times, seem to edge rather closely to the cusp of mania. Positive emotions, according to Jamison, increase our capacity for creativity, learning, expansive thinking, and social connection, a theory that is called "broaden and build" in burgeoning field of postive psychology. This capacity for joy is an essential evolutionary human trait, a trait that drives development, innovation, and growth. Check out Martin Seligman and Jon Haidt's work if research on positive emotions and happiness interest you. 9/10

Would that all science writing were this graceful!

On my monitor at work is a quote from Diderot: "Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things." In Exuberance: The Passion for Life, Kay Redfield Jamison, professor of psychology and MacArthur fellow, explores and even celebrates the our capacity for play, passion and enthusiasm. And what a ride it is! She looks at playful and celebratory behaviors in other animals, examining the possible evolutionary benefits of risk-taking and the chemical and hormonal rewards for discovery and learning. Her exuberant subjects include Snoopy, Tigger, Mr. Toad, Teddy Roosevelt, Richard Feynman, Louis Armstrong, Jane Goodall and many others from history, fiction, and personal interviews. She even warns us of the potential dangers, the rocks and shoals of the bounding waves: Champagne enchants, but it also intoxicates more quickly than stiller wines: heed glides into heedlessness as effortlessly as the silk chemise drops to the floor. I learned much about my own passions and obsessions (and feel a bit less guilty about them), and after reading Exuberance I feel like I understand some of those unique, absorbed, adventurous individuals who have crossed my path. This is no a dry science text. Jamison invites us to sip champagne, shoot off fireworks, and celebrate with her in the passionate experience of humanity.

Exuberance - The Result of Reading this Book

I was surprised to see this book doesn't have 5 stars. I have read most of Kay Jamison's books (I still have _Touched with Fire_ and her textbook on the illness to go) and have found her to be eloquent and sensitive in describing a ravaging illness, and the tragedies that accompany it. As a sufferer of Bipolar II rapid cycling, I've found myself holding on to one emotion or the other--fostering a depression to avoid going into an exhausting mania, fostering manic excitement to avoid despair and flatness. Kay Jamison neatly avoids either pitfall, and describes positive psychology in a way that has never been done before, certainly never so beautifully. Her quotes are illuminating and have lead me to many authors and poets I would never otherwise have discovered. In a time when many blame criminal acts on their bipolar disorder, it is refreshing and, also, strangely sad, to find this creation I do not believe could have been written without having spiraled into those addictive, destructive highs where the world is perilously beautiful. Most of the books available relating to the illness that are not textbooks are "survival guides," cookie cutter books with the same information you can find anywhere on the Internet. _Exuberance: The Passion for Life_ is an experience you will not find anywhere else; I hope it for you, as it was for me, an experience that will deepen your appreciation for life and human achievement.

Exuberant about Exuberance

I am in total agreement with Nobel Laureate Jim Watson's comments "Kay Jamison's unquenchable prose matches the luxuriant lives of her doers and shakers" Exuberance has been a neglected mood in psychology. Jamison does a wonderful job of explicating it and showing its importance in the advancement of many unexpected fields of endeavor. I was intriqued by her examples and loved her direct quotes.

Exuberance for the living

This is a brilliant woman who has written another brilliant book. If you have come to the conclusion that I like this book you are right. First, even the idea to study exuberance took courage. The author has previously written about her own fierce battles with manic depression. She is a serious scientist that risked her reputation to expose that side of herself before and now she has written a book that explores emotions perilously close to the up side of her illness. Admitting that she admires the emotion, given her prior disclosure of manic depression, is fraught with special risk for Dr. Jamison. While the positive emotions are understudied, this provides an admitted manic depressive with little cover. Many a depressive has gone off of their medication because of the claimed attractiveness of the manic state. Dr, Jamison neatly traverses this difficult terrain by keeping her attention focused on others. Early in the book she concentrates her energy on President Theodore Roosevelt. Exuberance is probably the word most used to describe his personality, but still she probes deeper and uncovers insights that have eluded even gifted biographers of this fascinating man. If you are interested in what made TR tick you should read this book. If you have read Dr. Jamison before you expect such penetrating insights, but even though I have read all of her general works I was unprepared for the beauty of expression, both hers and of many quotations both shrewd and charming that adorn the text and advance her thought. One of each: "Joy lacks the gravitas that suffering so effortlessly commands." Jamison at 5; "The Greeks understood the mysterious power of the hidden side of things. They bequeathed to us one of the most beautiful words in our language - the word `enthusiasm' - en theos - a god within. The grandeur of human actions is measured by the inspiration from which they spring. Happy is he who hears a god within, and who obeys it." Louis Pasteur, same page. It is rare indeed to be reading a serious work and find yourself saying, "Wow." I will close this review of a serious work that has offered me insights into a favorite historical figure as well as my children by another quote only slightly changed: (Kay Jamison Jamison's book on exuberance recounts) "a magnificent obsession, plumb-line true and enduring." at 39. When you finish reading this wonderful book you will wonder as I did how it could have been researched and written as her beloved husband lay dying. Only a woman who realized to her core that life is a savage beauty could bear such witness to joy in the midst of such pain. Read this book.