The author of the bestselling An Unquiet Mind-and internationally renowned authority on feeling disorders-now gives us something wonderfully different: an exploration of exuberance and exactly how it fuels our most important creative and medical achievements.

John Muir’s lifelong interest to save America’s wild areas, Wilson Bentley’s legendary obsession to record for posterity the wonder of individual snowflakes, the boundless scientific curiosity behind Watson and Crick’s finding of DNA, ocean lions about Exuberance: The Interest forever that surf and porcupines that dance-Kay Redfield Jamison displays how these and so many more examples both individual and pet define the type of exuberance, and exactly how this exuberance relates to intellectual searching, risk-taking, imagination, and success itself. She examines the hereditary predisposition to exuberance; the part of the mind chemical dopamine; the bond between positive moods and emotional resilience; as well as the distinctions between exuberance and mania. She delves into some of the phenomena of exuberance-the contagiousness of laughter, the giddiness of new love, the intoxicating effects of music and of spiritual ecstasy-while also dealing with the dangerous desire to simulate exuberance by using drugs or alcoholic beverages. In a fascinating and personal coda to the rest of the book, renowned scientists, authors, and politicians talk about their applying for grants the forms and part of exuberance within their own lives.

Original, motivating, authoritative, Exuberance brims with the very drive and desire it celebrates.