Average customer rating:
- Short memoir on major depression.
- Movie much better than book
- Little disappointed.
- This Book Brings Back So Many Memories....
- Lovely and Disturbing
|
Girl, Interrupted
Susanna Kaysen
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Authors
| Arts & Literature
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Special Needs
| Specific Groups
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Women
| Specific Groups
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Memoirs
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Kaysen, Susanna
| ( K )
| Authors, A-Z
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Internal Medicine
| Medicine
| Subjects
| Books
| Cardiology
| Critical Care
| Endocrinology & Metabolism
| Gastroenterology
| General
| Hematology
| Hepatology
| Infectious Disease
| Nephrology
| Neurology
| Oncology
| Pulmonary
| Rheumatology
| Urology
Biographies & Memoirs
| Book Clubs
| Specialty Stores
| Books
Similar Items:
-
Prozac Nation
-
The Virgin Suicides
-
Girl, Interrupted
-
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (Signet)
-
The Bell Jar
ASIN: 0679746048
Release Date: 1994-04-19 |
Amazon.com
When reality got "too dense" for 18-year-old Susanna Kaysen, she was hospitalized. It was 1967, and reality was too dense for many people. But few who are labeled mad and locked up for refusing to stick to an agreed-upon reality possess Kaysen's lucidity in sorting out a maelstrom of contrary perceptions. Her observations about hospital life are deftly rendered; often darkly funny. Her clarity about the complex province of brain and mind, of neuro-chemical activity and something more, make this book of brief essays an exquisite challenge to conventional thinking about what is normal and what is deviant.
Book Description
In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital. She spent most of the next two years on the ward for teenage girls in a psychiatric hospital as renowned for its famous clientele--Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles--as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary.
Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a "parallel universe" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties.
Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching documnet that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.
Customer Reviews:
Short memoir on major depression........2007-08-05
There were several things I liked about this book. It had short chapters, so the story flowed. It was a lot different than the movie (and I think better). It exposes the lengths Hollywood goes to in "adapting" a story for film. I enjoyed reading this book. It was a quick read (maybe two or three sittings). Kaysen is real with her thoughts and shocking when telling about the other patients in the ward. I like the addition of copies of some pages from her case file! They were so sparsely worded but enough to commit her. It makes me think about the state of the mental health system in the 1960's! It seemed all too easy for her to be "locked away." You can really see her brilliant mind at work in this book. I definitely recommend it for people interested in studying mental illness.
Movie much better than book.......2007-07-16
This is the rare case when the movie is far superior to the book. The book is very introspective and mostly medical, as the author examines her diagnosis and reflects on it. The characters she meets in the mental institution are touched on briefly. I applaud the screenwriters for taking those few mentions and expanding them and really making an interesting story out of it...which is the movie. Their different spin on Lisa, Daisy, the tunnels, the suicide, the psychology behind Daisy, were all very imaginative. On the other hand, the book does a better job of explaining the title and tying it into the Vermeer painting, which isn't even mentioned in the movie.
Little disappointed........2007-06-14
I did like the book and her account of what she went through. I never thought I would EVER say this in my life; but, the movie was better. I expected the book to be bigger than it was. Being a Psychology Major, it was interesting to read about one of the mental institutions back in the "60's"
This Book Brings Back So Many Memories...........2007-05-13
At the age of 17, in the summer of 1972, I was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward at a local hospital. My original diagnosis was OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder)--which I understood not at all. I thought I was being punished for dropping out of school and refusing to socialize with anyone!
So I can totally relate to Susanna and the other girls in this wonderful book. It sounds so much like the months (not years, thankfully!) that I spent in that first hospital. (Yes, there were more later). I can relate so vividly to being with a group of young women--still in their teens--sharing a ward, trying to outwit the doctors and nurses, trying to understand why we were locked up on beautiful summer afternoons while our old friends were all out dating, going to parties, preparing for a future we never felt we would have.
I don't know how an "outsider" would react to this book (and the movie that followed)--I just know that for me, it was like taking a long look back into my own adolescence. It was a kind of affirmation, somehow, for me that my time since then hasn't been totally wasted. It makes me feel less strange to know that others have gone thru the same thing.
If you are fortunate enough never to have spent time in a mental hospital, if you were blessed with "good" mental health, this is an eye-opening glimpse into what that world is like--or what it WAS like, before mental patients were allowed only days inside (at most) thanks to draconian insurance laws and "deinstitutionalization".
Kaysen tells her story in almost unbearably tender yet unsentimental prose. You feel for her, as you do for all her fellow patients....even for some of the doctors and nurses. You see how difficult just making it from one day to the next is for someone diagnosed "mentally ill".
Susanna Kaysen, thank you for this wonderful book.
Lovely and Disturbing.......2007-05-10
I have people I care about who are mentally ill. This book was an almost beautiful way to show me how they may have viewed the world. None of it was easy. Most of it was downright horrifying. But the insights into it were agonizingly clear. Ms. Kaysen alternates the 1st person viewpoint of living in an asylum for two years with the clinical paperwork that accompanied it. The result is disturbing. But . . . the last few chapters, dealing with her life since that experience, hands out a vision of, not hope necessarily, but a sense of horizon, for those of us who have loved ones struggling with mental illness.
One cautionary note though. This is not a book for children. There are levels of sexuality and violence not appriopriate for the young.
Average customer rating:
|
Bocon!
Manufacturer: The Dramatic Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0871298708 |
Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Advocate (The national gay & lesbian newsmagazine), published by Thomson Gale on June 19, 2007. The length of the article is 862 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Girl, interrupted no more: Los Angeles Times sportswriter Christine Daniels (nee Mike Penner) announced in an April column that she is transitioning to life as a woman. Her story set a readership record--but it's only just beginning.(PERSON TO KNOW: CHRISTINE DANIELS)(Column)
Author: Michele Kort
Publication:
The Advocate (The national gay & lesbian newsmagazine) (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 19, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Issue: 987
Page: 22(1)
Article Type: Column
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Clinical Psychiatry News, published by International Medical News Group on August 1, 2003. The length of the article is 3154 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Girl, interrupted.(Reel Life)
Author: Alan A. Stone
Publication:
Clinical Psychiatry News (Magazine/Journal)
Date: August 1, 2003
Publisher: International Medical News Group
Volume: 31
Issue: 8
Page: 61(2)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Cineaste, published by Cineaste Publishers, Inc. on June 22, 2000. The length of the article is 1613 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Girl, Interrupted.(Review) (movie review)
Author: Alice Goss
Publication:
Cineaste (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 22, 2000
Publisher: Cineaste Publishers, Inc.
Volume: 25
Issue: 3
Page: 48
Article Type: Movie Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from El Ritmo de la Noche, published by Editorial Sur, Inc. on February 1, 2000. The length of the article is 575 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: A Ritmo de Cine.(TT: Movies.)
Author: Alfredo De Armas
Publication:
El Ritmo de la Noche (Magazine/Journal)
Date: February 1, 2000
Publisher: Editorial Sur, Inc.
Page: 34
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
In the late 1980s, with the Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty in effect, public attention turned to discussions of conventional weapons in Europe, particularly tanks. Though the importance of tanks had dimished since their heyday in the Second World War, on the modern battlefield they remained the dominant weapon.This text, enhanced by colour plates and photographs, examines the NATO and Warsaw Pact tank forces of that era, focusing on tank firepower and crew training, and speculates as to the possible outcome had a conventional land war been fought between them.
Customer Reviews:
Accurate and True.......2005-03-25
An excellent book that outlines the equipment of the armies that may have fought a cold-war type conventional battle. Zaloga is a straight-shooter. Accurate and true!
Lob-sided view at the war that might of been........1998-08-10
The book starts off with a 'very' fictional scenario, which depicts an army of USSR's elite tanks being destroyed by three Western MBT's. Totally discarding that T-80, has the most powerful gun fitted to any tank, and that it has the capability to fire an anti-tank missile at ranges well beyond those achieved by The Abrams or the Challenger. The whole book is structured to expose USSR's armoured weaknesses, some of which are quite fictional, while not even mentioning the setbacks the "Western" armies have. Steven Zaloga's reference to Russian people as "Russkis" is quite symbolic of the tone in which the entire book was written. Drawings by Simon McCouaig are of high quality, especially the detailed look at the Tanks from Top, Side and Rear viewpoints. Also note how the "Russian observer" looks, compared to all the other people drawn in the "colour" plates.
Average customer rating:
|
11th Armored Division Thunderbolt: Ardennes Rhineland Central Europe
Berry Craig
Manufacturer: Turner Pub Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
| Europe
| History
| Subjects
| Books
General
| World
| History
| Subjects
| Books
General
| World War II
| Military
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Western Front
| World War II
| Military
| History
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0938021648 |
Book Description
The Machiavellian Moment is a classic study of the consequences for modern historical and social consciousness of the ideal of the classical republic revived by Machiavelli and other thinkers of Renaissance Italy. J.G.A. Pocock suggests that Machiavelli's prime emphasis was on the moment in which the republic confronts the problem of its own instability in time, and which he calls the "Machiavellian moment."
After examining this problem in the thought of Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Giannotti, Pocock turns to the revival of republican thought in Puritan England and in Revolutionary and Federalist America. He argues that the American Revolution can be considered the last great act of civic humanism of the Renaissance. He relates the origins of modern historicism to the clash between civic, Christian, and commercial values in the thought of the eighteenth century.
Customer Reviews:
Brilliant.......2006-08-16
This is a remarkable, though not easy to digest, book. Pocock traces the development of modern republican political theory from its birth in Renaissance Florence to the end of the 18th century. This book incorporates both broad structural analysis of the the unfolding of this tradition and a detailed readings of the major and quite a few minor contributors to this tradition. Pocock starts out by demonstrating that the Christian-Medieval tradition of western Europe was not equipped with the conceptual apparatus to develop a theory of republican governance. Intellectuals in Renaissance Florence then had to look back to the Classical writings of Aristotle, the historian Polybius, and other classical writers, to develop a system of thought that could justify and guide the life of city-states in Italy. An underlying theme that Pocock stresses throughout the book is the struggle of intellectuals trying to develop systems of government that would produce fulfillment and stability but constantly confronted with the insecurity and unstable nature of the real world. Another recurrent theme is the pressure to articulate republican theory constantly being confronted with new circumstances. The development of republican theory, particularly by the brilliant Machiavelli and Guicciardini, being prompted by the specific historical circumstances faced by the Florentine state. Machiavelli is really the pivotal figure, developing political theory unmoored from the divine. After tracing the development of Florentine theory, Pocock moves onto the development of republican theory in the very different circumstances of 17th century Britain. Here, theory had to accomodate not the problems of a city-state but an entire nation and changed significantly under the stimulus of the English Civil War. Pocock presents James Harrington as the key modifier and transmitter of the Machiavellian tradition and who in particular emphasized the role of property as the basis for republican stability. Pocock then moves on to the challenges of the 18th century with the confrontation of republican theory with an emerging commercial and imperial society. The final chapter deals with what happened when the American revolutionaries attempted to construct to a new society based on classical republican ideas. The failure of these ideas prompted the development of a new version of republican theory. Pocock's close analysis of individual thinkers is sometimes tough reading but ultimately rewarding. The analyses of individual thinkers are punctuated by general analyses that are invariably insightful and sometimes brilliant. Among other things, this is a basic book for understanding the intellectual background of the American Revolution and many important topics in modern history.
Birth and growth of the modern republic-- in a nutshell.......2005-02-21
This is the best book that I have found to date that traces the development of the theory of the modern "res public" from Machiavelli and the Florentine city-state, to the Glorious revolution in 17th century England, to the foundation of the American republic.
The Machiavellian moment comes when the founders of a state realize that "virtue" can be dependent upon "contingency" at some point in the life of every government, and that the res public is the best method known to humans to manage both to the benefit of the citizens/body politic; "virtue" refers to the energy that the humanist writers of the period demanded of any honest citizen, in the vita activa; contingency is the weakness that enters into any human-created activity, given the incomplete nature of our knowledge.
This book is clearly written, and not difficult to digest if you come to it with some preliminary understanding, say, from quentin skinner's foundations of modern political thought.
I am finishing richard tuck's philosophy and government 1572-1651 which purports to analyze the development of the period's political thought up to Hobbes' publication of Leviathan in 1651, but it just isn't as rich or satisfying a work as this.
If you want to know why Machiavelli is so important, and understand his influence on the two greatest exemplars of republican thought since his time, this is without a doubt the book to read.
Machiavelli?.......2002-09-22
This book is a masterful testament to man's ability to become immersed in the importance of the force of history. After reading Pocock, there is no way to deny that this same historical force eclipses everyone in its path. It will be years before speaking or writing about Machiavelli apart from his historical moment will be possible. Any student of Machiavelli should avoid Mr. Pocock's book for this very reason.
Brilliant but Nebulous.......2000-12-29
This book has become a classic of historiography of political thought. However, getting through this enormous work and following the argument from 15th century Italy to 18th century America makes for very difficult reading. It is also quite hard to sum up exactly what is the characteristic of republican thought that he is studying (much of this criticism was made by historian Jack Hexter in a review).
Well worth the time invested in reading!.......2000-01-18
Pocock has written a profoundly exhaustive study of Florentine republican theory in the time of Machiavelli, the Republic, and the Medici restoration. He painstakingly makes his argument that the roots of Machiavelli's thought are to be found more in the metaphysical world view of Thomism than in the teleological taxonomy of Aristotle. He goes on to argue that the aim of Machiavelli, and contemporaries such as Guicciardini, is the attainment of stability in secular time through the proper extension of civic rights. He then goes on to claim that this aim is followed by the architects of Eighteenth Century Anglo-American republicanism. This strong intepretation of Anglo-American republicanism may understate the impact of, for example, the Miltonian view of individual capacity for moral and political reasoning. However, it certainly is expounded well enough here to hold its own in any debate. In passing, Pocock makes liberal use of untranslated Italian text. While this is useful to the Renaissance specialist, it would be helpful had he included translations for those of us who bring no Italian to the table.
Average customer rating:
|
The Wildlife Trusts Guide to Birds (Wildlife Trusts Guide Series)
Manufacturer: New Holland Publishers, Ltd.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Reference
| Subjects
| Books
| Almanacs & Yearbooks
| Atlases & Maps
| Audiobooks
| Books on CD
| Books on Cassette
| Business Skills
| Careers
| Catalogs & Directories
| Consumer Guides
| Dictionaries & Thesauruses
| Education
| Encyclopedias
| Etiquette
| Foreign Languages
| Fun Facts
| Genealogy
| General
| Job Hunting
| Large Print
| Law
| Publishing & Books
| Quotations
| Spanish-Language Reference
| Study Guides
| Test Prep Central
| Words & Language
| Writing
General
| Nature & Ecology
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
Ornithology
| Zoology
| Biological Sciences
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Birdwatching
| Outdoors & Nature
| Subjects
| Books
Reference
| Outdoors & Nature
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 1859749585 |
Books:
- Golden Boy: Memories of a Hong Kong Childhood
- Grant and Sherman: The Friendship That Won the Civil War
- Heartbreak & Triumph: The Shawn Michaels Story (WWE)
- Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad
- His Excellency: George Washington
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- Hudson Taylors Spiritual Secret
- I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away
- Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia
- Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Como agua para chocolate
- X-Men Visionaries: Jim Lee TPB
- The Stone Skeleton: Structural Engineering of Masonry Architecture
- Theros Ironfeld
- Versace : The Naked and the Dressed: 20 Years of Versace by Avedon
- Yellow Eyes
- When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt After the White House
- Kathmandu Valley Painting: The Jucker Collection
- The Learning Mystique: A Critical Look at "Learning Disabilities"
- Ecology and Man in Mexico's Central Volcanoes Area
