The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under -- maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche...

"In a war-torn village in Eastern Europe, an American photographer captures a heart-stopping image: a young girl flying toward the lens, fleeing a fiery explosion that has engulfed her home and family. The image, instantly iconic, garners acclaim and prizes and, in the United States, becomes a subject of obsession for one writer, the photographer's best friend, who has suffered a devastating tragedy of her own"--

Despite an idyllic family life, including two children and a loving husband, the depression that consumed former business exec Hersh drove her to three suicide attempts in the space of six months. In this inspiring, brutal memoir, Hersh documents her struggle back to life, including stints in hospital psychiatric wards, a month at an anti-depression camp, various medications, and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Hersh renders her journey in graceful...

Camila cannot wait for her trip to Chiapas. Yes, she must work there and write an article for her magazine, but the recent death of her child has left her deeply depressed, and she needs to start fresh. In Chiapas, she is torn between reconciling her past and the possibility of starting anew. This is a tender portrait of a woman capable of facing her own contradictions.

"This Close to Happy is the first account to endeavor to tell the story of what it feels to suffer a lifetime's worth of clinical depression from the inside out and from a woman's point of view"-- "Despair is always described as dull," writes Daphne Merkin, "when the truth is that despair has a light all its own, a lunar glow, the color of mottled silver." This Close to Happy--Merkin's rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer...