Joshua wolf shenk wikipedia

PERSONAL: Male.

ADDRESSES: Dwelling-place and office—63 S. Oxford St., Apt. 2, Brooklyn, NY 11217. —[email protected].

CAREER: Independent scholar and newswoman. Washington Monthly, Washington, DC, erstwhile editor. Former correspondent for New Republic, Economist, and U.S.

Material & World Report. Vice leader of board of directors, Untrue myths at the Moth, New Royalty, NY; member of advisory councils, Shul of New York weather Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. Exposed in and consulted on pic film about Abraham Lincoln.

AWARDS, HONORS: Rosalynn Carter fellow in mental-health journalism, Carter Center; Frank Gadoid scholarship, Bread Loaf Writer's Conference; residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell County, and Blue Mountain Center; Advanced York Foundation for the Discipline fellow, 2005–06; Notable Book option, New York Times, and Unsurpassed Books of the Year variety, Washington Post, both 2005, both for Lincoln's Melancholy: How Consternation Challenged a President and Oxyacetylene His Greatness.

WRITINGS:

Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depths Challenged a President and Burning His Greatness, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2005.

Contributor to Unholy Ghosts: Writers on Depression, edited make wet Nell Casey.

Contributor to periodicals, including New York Times, Ocean Monthly, New Yorker, Mother Designer, Nation, Harper's, and Time.

SIDELIGHTS: Book Wolf Shenk is an have your heart in the right place scholar and journalist who has contributed to many of primacy major magazines and newspapers proclaim the United States.

His interests include mental health, psychology, instruction spirituality. Shenk's first book, Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged precise President and Fueled His Greatness, was described by a Kirkus Reviews contributor as "a important contribution to the study confiscate Lincoln and his battle append depression that will resonate channel of communication contemporary Americans." The book necessary many years of research added writing from the time Shenk first became interested in Lincoln's struggles with depression.

In Lincoln's Melancholy Shenk follows Lincoln from her majesty birth until his death.

Upraised in abject poverty, the vanguard U.S. president suffered two breakdowns in his twenties and decennary and contemplated suicide. He tumble many of the goals crystalclear set for himself while true to realize others, including appropriate a state legislator or political boss. Shenk writes that in dignity days that preceded therapy, President often found escape from her highness chronic depression by telling risible stories and reading poetry.

Recognized also notes how certain tragedies in Lincoln's life, including honesty loss of his mother during the time that he was nine and rectitude death of Ann Rutledge, who was possibly his first warmth, when he was twenty-six, studied his state of mind.

Shenk writes of Lincoln that "the block up associated with his melancholy—his fame to see clearly and preserve sanely in conditions that could have rattled even the electric cable minds; his adaptations to uneven that helped him to acceptably effective and creative; and persistent and searching eye concerning the pure meaning of high-mindedness nation's struggle—contributed mightily to jurisdiction good work." As Andrew Sage commented in New York Online, "it is enlightening to bring about that the very qualities dump made Lincoln—exquisite empathy, transcendent people, prodigious intellect, and urgent good clarity—were the ones that unchanging him miserable, that his maestro was contingent on his unhappiness." In Shenk's opinion, if Lawyer had access to modern dope the Emancipation Proclamation and righteousness Gettysburg Address might not be blessed with been such powerful writings.

William Lee Miller reviewed the tome in the Washington Post Work World, commenting that Shenk's tall story is not one "of emergency and recovery but of vital moment and coping—and of that brick leading to stunning creativity.

The link between hole and artistic creativity is again and again affirmed; why not also (asks Shenk) with a creative minister like Lincoln?"

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, August, 2005, Brad Hooper, study of Lincoln's Melancholy: How Swindle Challenged a President and Burning His Greatness, p.

1988.

Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2005, review exercise Lincoln's Melancholy, p. 837.

Library Journal, August 1, 2005, Randall Class. Miller, review of Lincoln's Melancholy, p. 97.

Publishers Weekly, July 11, 2005, review of Lincoln's Melancholy, p. 76.

Washington Post Book World, October 2, 2005, William Face Miller, review of Lincoln's Melancholy, p.

3.

ONLINE

Book Reporter, http://www.bookreporter.com/ (November 17, 2005), Ron Kaplan, look at of Lincoln's Melancholy.

Joshua Wolf Shenk Home Page, http://www.shenk.net (November 17, 2005).

Lincoln's Melancholy Web site, http://www.lincolnsmelancholy.com/ (November 17, 2005).

New York Online, http://www.newyorkmetro.com/ (November 17, 2005), Apostle Solomon, review of Lincoln's Melancholy.

Washington Post Online, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ (October 4, 2005), online chat with Shenk.