Depression Books

Ably written by Gregory L. Jantz (the founder and executive director of the mental health and chemical dependency treatment facility The Center for Counseling and Health Resources Inc.) with the assistance of Ann McMurry and featured an informative Foreword by Dr. Abram Hoffer, Moving Beyond Depression: A Whole-Person Approach To Healing is a powerful and effective self-help guide to the personal search for emotional equilibrium; rebuilding personal and familial relation-ships; identifying the physical causes of depression; renewing spiritual connections, and more. Focusing on the importance of looking at one's life as a whole in order to treat depression (including the emotional, environmental, relational, phy-sical, and spiritual factors involved in melancholia), Moving Beyond Depression is very highly recommended reading -- especially for those struggle with their own "dark nights of the soul".

They describe this audio as "like the car wreck that shut down the town or the time the puppeteers walked out of the Oddfellows' variety show, and the dark ones, primarily the death of his father. Reminiscent of Garrison Keillor in his folksiness, Dietz has a tone and delivery that are all his own--though many of his expressions are taken, appropriately, from the voices of the community he's talking about." It is hard to beat that description, so I won't even try. More reviews at AudioColumn.com

The Natural Medicine Guide To Depression by medical journalist Stephanie Marohn informatively studies a wide variety of causes for depression and recommends an assortment of treatments (other than drugs) that can help alleviate depression and its diverse symptomatology. Natural medicine treatments such as homeopathy, flower essence therapy, psychic healing, traditional Chinese medicine, and others are discussed, in this thoughtful guide. However, the remedies here showcased should not be seen as a first resort because the experience of a professional doctor is of utmost importance. The Natural Medicine Guide is a recommended supplement to, not a replacement of, standard medical care in the treatment of depression.

Philosopher Radden culls the works of 32 authors, preceded by an excellent 50-page introduction to the topic, once a commonplace idea, now "an insignificant category, of little interest to medicine or pscyhology..." The pleasure in learning from this valuable work is a modicum of joy in the midst of sorrow.
My full review appeared in The Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 2002.

I had to write an essay on the New Deal's effect on the Native American way of life (which, believe me, has very little written on it) and this book was absolutely perfect. Everything I wanted to know about the New Deal in relation to Native American Indians was readily at my fingertips in this easy to understand, well organized, comprehensive guide to the Indian New Deal. I highly recommend it.

Franklin Roosevelt is considered by many historians of the American West to be the most important president for western USA, because FDR's massive public investments in energy, water, and credit greatly developed the infrastructure of the region and made the region more viable for private economic investment. Massive investments were also made in the Pacific Northwest, parts of the South, and other areas. These investments helped fuel the decades of booming economic expansion that followed - the great post-war boom.

Examples of these investments include the Norris Dam, Humboldt River Aqueduct, Los Angeles Aqueduct, Bonneville Navigation Dam, Grand Coulee Dam, Pocatello Reservoir, All American Irrigation Canal, Wyoming Drought Canal, Houston Ship Canal, Denver Water Tunnel, Nebraska Power Project, Fort Peck Dam, Mississippi erosion Mattress, and 26 Dams and Locks on the St. Louis-Minneapolis Waterway. Thousands of schools, bridges and tunnels were also built - too many to list.

This book profiles the New Dealers who worked to further the economic developments of their areas of interest. Some profiles are more interesting than others. A stronger overall history weaved throughout would have made the book even better. Big investments in the infrastructure were made.

Other kinds of investments made too. FDR's GI Bill also made a huge investment in America's human capital. Thousands of Americans were able to attend college for the first time. This helped greatly expand the middle class and helped lead to the great post-war boom. FDR brought electricity to hundreds of thousands of people who had no electricity before FDR became president. Huge amounts of credit also were extended to regions to foster development. Decades of booming, stable prosperity followed - the great post-war boom.

A great book on the economic history of America, to put these investments in context, is John Gordon Steele's "An Empire of Wealth." There had been other big investments previously in American history but not on this broad of a scale and usually only for the Northeast.

So much emphasis has been placed on Roosevelt's Great Depression relief programs and Social Security - his basic welfare state (later expanded by subsequent presidents and Congress) - that the New Deal's long-term economic achievements often get overlooked.

In addition, FDR's economic stabilizers created lasting economic stability and prevented another depression. These reforms included the SEC to police financial markets, FDIC to end bank runs and save the banking industry, Federal Reserve Open Market Committee to control the money supply, and other regulatory agencies to prevent detrimental economic behavior, etc. Prior to FDR, there had been several depressions in American history. After FDR, a depression never happened again. Decades of booming, stable prosperity followed - the post-war boom.

The New York Times review of this book, by Alonzo Hamby, said that the idea of New Deal investment in the infrastructure "had its origins in the huge Federal spending and economic planning of World War I and... was midwifed in the 30's... by regional politicians, especially the Texans Jesse Jones, Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson.

"Carried out by public administrators (especially David E. Lilienthal) and furthered by private entrepreneurs (foremost among them Henry J. Kaiser), the New Deal brought the comforts of modernity and the blessings of industrialization to the Pacific Northwest, the Tennessee Valley and thousands of farms and small towns in the 'colonial' areas of a nation dominated by a Northeastern imperial metropole. World War II consolidated these changes, Mr. Schwarz writes, creating shipyards and aircraft factories that stretched from the Canadian border to San Diego, spilled over into Texas and dotted the Gulf Coast. After the war, he says, state capitalism manifested itself in numerous foreign development schemes that provided markets for American goods and in massive enterprises like the space program.

"Let no one assume that this is simply interesting academic history with no relevance to today's policy debates. The New Deal, Mr. Schwarz tells us, 'built the world's largest middle-class society by following an experimental industrial policy'...

"Mr. Schwarz tells his story through a series of biographical profiles of New Deal precursors... [and] invariably wanders down side issues that are often intriguing... but take attention away from his central argument...

"In truth, if the term applies to any Federal expenditure that promotes economic development, then it is part of an American tradition shared by conservatives and liberals, dating back to Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson and encompassing the transcontinental railways, the Panama Canal and, above all, the river and harbor appropriations that were a key ingredient of politics long before World War I. One concludes this book uncertain just where the pork barrel ends and state capitalism begins, but it clearly is an important and suggestive work, essential to a comprehension of the age of Roosevelt."

Finally, Eisenhower continued the investment in the infrastructure by building the interstate highway system. Lyndon Johnson greatly expanded public investment through his Great Society programs. (Some of his welfare programs, by the way, received fair critisims). Perhaps his best investments were in education: Head Start, student loans/grants, K-12 funding, etc. That helped greatly expand the pool of educated workers needed for the information age. LBJ also made huge investments in space programs and other infrastructure investments.

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R2J89JAT1PQ30Q Surving The First Year - A Guide For New Mothers.

Most of the editorial reviews are self-explanatory - a few things that surprised me:

1. The hardship that the Great Depression caused for synagogues and other Jewish institutions; I have always taken the financial stability of Jewish institutions for granted, but evidently Jews in the 1930s did not have this luxury.

2. That concerns over assimilation are nothing new. In 1929, almost 80% of NYC Jewish children received no religious training or Hebrew instruction (p. 184).

3. Where Jews lived (see p. 82 for table). I had always known that some once-Jewish neighborhoods have lost most of their Jewish population (mostly notably in the Bronx). But I did not know about similarities between then and now: for example, the Upper West Side, then as now, was heavily Jewish- and ditto for Borough Park (though the latter area was less homogenously Orthodox in the 30s than today). Other areas were virtually Jew-free in the 30s (Greenwich Village, Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights) and may actually be more Jewish today, as gentrification has brought in Jewish professionals. Similarly, the Jewish presence in Queens was minimal in the 30s, but is far larger today- I was astonished to learn, for instance, that Forest Hills was less than 10% Jewish in 1932.

Me encanta este video libro...es sin lugar a dudas unos de mis predilectos a la hora de escuchar las realidades de la vida, porque, en verdad el que no se ocupa se preocupa!

Gracias Facundo Cabral!

The author approaches the issues of abuse and past trauma in an unusual and entertaining way, by examining the lives of five celebrities Streisand, Winfrey, Barrymore, Berry and Moore. The book should how each faced severe challenges in their youth but learned to survive and eventually triumph. Each biography is introduced by a well known fairytale which illustrates life struggles specifically as it applies to the celebrity it is introducing. The book is instantly compelling. After an informative introduction, the author's first chapter deals with surviving by meeting challenges directly and coping with adversity. Here, Coffey specifically but briefly considers her five examples of women who are succeeding--not only in their professions but in their lives. We see that "success" is not so much an arrival as it is a process. The general structure of Coffey's book follows a pattern of discussion and example, concluded with a self assessment questionnaire for the reader. I recommend this book for anyone interested in past traumatic issues whether for themselves or for general knwledge.