My post two days ago on the links between depression and creativity sparked some smart comments. Perhaps the best was sent to me privately by the excellent blogger The NeuroCritic, and I am highlighting it in its own post here, with The Neurocritic’s permission, because it makes a an important point that I failed to note […]
Continue reading →Last night, reading the wonderful third chapter of Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine,* I came across some material, new to me, on the links between melancholy and creativity. I’m fairly familiar with this literature, but not the the last couple years’ worth, and in that time the stack has grown. Experimental work by researchers like Joe Forgas […]
Continue reading →In 1864, in a radically risky move crucial to winning the Civil War, William Tecumseh Sherman led his army of some 80,000 men to Atlanta, burned it to the ground, and then marched to the coast of South Carolina, destroying almost all in his path. It was a wild, improbable gambit: He meant to and did […]
Continue reading →