Monkey Mind

**THIS TITLE WILL ONLY BE AVAILABLE UNTIL 7/3/12**

“Smith’s book is so bracingly honest, so hilarious, so sharp, it’s clear there’s one thing he doesn’t have to be anxious about: Whether or not he’s a great writer.” —A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically

“A wise, funny book, a great mix of startling memoir and fascinating medical and literary history, all of it delivered with humor and a true generosity of spirit.” —Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land

“You don’t need a Jewish mother, or a profound sweating problem, to feel Daniel Smith’s pain inMonkey Mind. His memoir treats chronic anxiety with wisdom, honesty, and belly laughs that come from troubles transformed.” —Chad Harbach, author of The Art of Fielding

“Read this book. You have nothing to lose but your heart palpitations and your Xanax habit.” —Eric Weiner, author of The Geography of Bliss

We all think we know what being anxious feels like: It is the instinct that made us run from wolves in the prehistoric age and pushes us to perform in the modern one. But for 40 million American adults, anxiety is an insidious condition that defines daily life. Yet no popular memoir has been written about that experience until now. Aaron Beck, the most influential doctor in modern psychotherapy, says that “Monkey Mind does for anxiety what William Styron’s Darkness Visible did for depression.”
In Monkey Mind, Daniel Smith brilliantly articulates what it is like to live with anxiety, defanging the disease with humor, traveling through its demonic layers, evocatively expressing both its painful internal coherence and its absurdities. He also draws on its most storied sufferers to trace anxiety’s intellectual history and its influence on our time. Here, finally, comes relief and recognition to millions of people who want someone to put what they feel, or what their loved ones feel, into words.

Daniel Smith is the author of Muses, Madmen, and Prophets and a contributor to numerous publications, including The American Scholar, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, and Slate.