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Books: A First-Rate Madness

September 13, 2011 | Books,Politics,TLC Book Tours

I just finished reading A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links between Leadership and Mental Illness by Nassir Ghaemi. I received a review copy from the publisher, Penguin.

When I first got this book, I thought, oh great. Another book about a bunch of dead guys. And it was, indeed, a book about men. It was about some of the most noted leaders in history — Lincoln, Sherman, Churchill, Gandhi, FDR, JFK, MLK and Ted Turner — and how mental illness either hurt or helped them as leaders. And it’s not what you might think.

He argues that a leader who suffers from, say, depression is the best leader during a time of crisis. With such a mental illness, he says, a leader is more likely to have the qualities of realism, empathy, resilience and creativity — all of which are needed to lead others through a crisis.

He also argues that leaders who are mentally healthy — Bush, Blair, Nixon — do more harm than good during crises.

I was skeptical at first. I figured this might be someone with a singular focus into which he wanted to fit this idea. It actually turned out, though, to be the opposite. He had a much more varied background — a degree in history, another in philosophy and another in public health — which helped him see patterns that others would not. A historian, for example, might fail to see the dimensions of mental illness in a subject’s life. Ghaemi, however, was able to draw from all of these aspects of his background to see a subject more clearly and completely.

He asked an important question after discussing Hitler (whose manic-depression was made worse by how and with what he was medicated), “Why not just exclude the mentally ill from positions of power?”

Because, he answered, “… such a stance would have deprived humanity of Lincoln, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Kennedy. But there’s an even more fundamental reason not to restrict leadership roles to the mentally healthy: they make bad leaders in times of crisis — just when we need good leadership most.”

I expected his writing to be dry or somewhat academic, but it wasn’t. He’s engaging and compelling, and the book is a great read. I highly recommend it.

Posted by Becky @ 3:43 pm | 4 Comments  

Penny

March 6, 2010 | 2009

My son will be studying money at school again, and he’s supposed to bring four quarters, 10 dimes, 10 nickels and 25 pennies Monday. Wouldn’t you know it? I just took in a huge bag of coins to the bank the other day. The kids bought me a Wii remote for Valentine’s Day (totally their idea, I swear) and paid for it themselves. Only thing is, we bought it online, so I took their change and deposited it into their savings accounts.

So here I am fishing around the house and in the cars for all the change I can find, and I ran across this new penny. At first I thought it was Canadian or something. But, no. It’s ours. And I wondered when the heck they started doing weird stuff with pennies.

Turns out: last year, after almost 50 years of the same thing on the back of a penny. The back of the penny was redesigned to celebrate the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. This one is known as the “Indiana Penny” because it shows him “reading while taking a break from rail splitting” in Indiana.

Ah well. Learn something new every day.

Anyone have nickels? I’m still four short.

Posted by Becky @ 6:13 pm | 3 Comments  

Music: Choo Choo

January 31, 2010 | Music

I <3 Twitter. Don’t you? It is SO full of awesome. And, OMG, the music. I follow some of my favorite musicians on Twitter, and I’ve found some great music I probably never would have found otherwise. The Snake Charmers? Hello. Rock!

I’ve followed Choo Choo, a band from Switzerland, for a while (@choochootheband). I finally ordered their CD, and it arrived the other day, so I listened to it. Oh, what fun. They describe their sound as 1960s teenage beat and Indie pop. And, yeah, I hear the 1980s resurgence of the 1960s in there. They remind me just a touch of Southern Culture on the Skids (SCOTS are way more hillbilly, but something is similar, especially the frantic drums) with a dash of The Finnsters, who could do a mean Steppin’ Stone back in the day. They’re working on a new album right now, and I think it’s due out later this year. Go, Choo Choo!

(Speaking about SCOTS, did I ever tell you about them, Skipper’s and Stephen King? Eh, another day, then.)

Posted by Becky @ 6:00 am | 3 Comments  



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