Event: 'A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering The Links Between Leadership And Mental Illness' Print
  Greater Boston
Events taking place in the Boston area.
Date: Monday, September 10, 2012 At 07:00 pm
Contact Info:
(617) 661-1515
Email: info@harvard.com

Location: Harvard Book Store. 1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

 

 

Description: Harvard Book Store is pleased to welcome director of the Mood Disorders Program at Tufts Medical Center NASSIR GHAEMI for a discussion of his book A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness.

Historians have long puzzled over the apparent mental instability of great and terrible leaders alike: Napoleon, Lincoln, Churchill, Hitler, and others. In A First-Rate Madness, Nassir Ghaemi offers a myth-shattering exploration of the powerful connections between mental illness and leadership and sets forth a controversial, compelling thesis: the very qualities that mark those with mood disorders also make for the best leaders in times of crisis. From the importance of Lincoln’s “depressive realism” to the lackluster leadership of exceedingly sane men as Neville Chamberlain, A First-Rate Madness overturns many of our most cherished perceptions about greatness and the mind.