Literature and Poetry
Rosalind Cartwright: The Queen of Dreams
I became curious about the difference in the dreams of those who recovered from depression on their own and those who did not. This started me on a series of studies of people going through a particular emotional problem — divorce. After studying 150 people over a period of years, I discovered that dreams have a specific function: In the healthy person, dreams regulate mood. In some depressed people, the dreams are self-correcting over time, but other people need additional help. more »
Book Review: You Came Here to Die, Didn't You?
It’s always easier to write about the causes of fear than every-day drudgery, and the author’s descriptions of these scares and others make her summer sound exciting – in both senses of the word. She does this as though she’s writing a novel; her account of these events is gripping. more »
CultureWatch, January 2011 Edition
Cleopatra: A Life — In the end, we must ask ourselves if Stacy Schiff, one of the most gifted American biographers currently writing, has successfully peeled away two millennia of myth and propaganda or, rather, given us a new myth, a Cleopatra who fits modern, Western feminist thinking. In the Pursuit of Happiness — To call Maria Kalman's work idiosyncratic isn’t nearly powerful enough to describe what she has produced. It is an explosion of such brilliance that one scarcely knows where to start more »
The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives at the Morgan Library
For centuries, people have turned to private journals to document their days, sort out creative problems, help them through crises, comfort them in solitude or pain, or preserve their stories for the future. "The museum is noted for its holdings of manuscripts, sketches, letters, drawings, and other items that speak to the creative mind at work" more »