Best Minds

A revelatory look at how poet Allen Ginsberg transformed experiences of mental illness and madness into some of the most powerful and widely read poems of the twentieth century. Allen Ginsberg’s 1956 poem “Howl” opens with one of the most resonant phrases in modern poetry: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.” Thirty years later, Ginsberg entrusted a Columbia University medical student with materials not shared with anyone else, including psychiatric records that documented how he and his mother, Naomi Ginsberg, struggled with mental illness. In Best Minds, psychiatrist, researcher, and scholar Stevan M. Weine, M.D., who was that medical student, examines how Allen Ginsberg took his visions and psychiatric hospitalization, his mother’s devastating illness, confinement, and lobotomy, and the social upheavals of the postwar world and imaginatively transformed them. Though madness is often linked with hardship and suffering, Ginsberg’s showed how it could also lead to profound and redemptive aesthetic, spiritual, and social changes. Through his revolutionary poetry and social advocacy, Ginsberg dedicated himself to leading others toward new ways of being human and easing pain. Throughout his celebrated career Ginsberg made us feel as though we knew everything there was to know about him. However, much has been left out about his experiences growing up with a mentally ill mother, his visions, and his psychiatric hospitalization. In Best Minds, with a forty-year career studying and addressing trauma, Weine provides a groundbreaking exploration of the poet and his creative process especially in relation to madness. Best Minds examines the complex relationships between mental illness, psychiatry, trauma, poetry, and prophecy—using the access Ginsberg generously shared to offer new, lively, and indispensable insights into an American icon. Weine also provides new understandings of the paternalism, treatment failures, ethical lapses, and limitations of American psychiatry in the 1940s and 1950s. In light of these new discoveries, the challenges Ginsberg faced appear starker and his achievements, both as a poet and an advocate, even more remarkable.

Buy now to get the main key ideas from Jonathan Rosen’s The Best Minds In 1995, Michael Laudor made headlines for defying schizophrenia stereotypes and graduating from Yale Law School despite his illness. He made headlines again in 1998 for fatally stabbing his pregnant girlfriend. In The Best Minds (2023), Michael’s childhood best friend Jonathan Rosen goes behind the scenes of the harrowing tragedy. He recounts their shared journey from their school days to Yale University to the tragic day that landed Michael in a forensic psychiatric hospital after psychosis overwhelmed him.

A wise and witty compendium of the greatest thoughts, greatest minds, and greatest books of all time—listed in accessible and succinct form—by one of the world's greatest scholars. From the “Hundred Best Books” to the “Ten Greatest Thinkers” to the “Ten Greatest Poets,” here is a concise collection of the world’s most significant knowledge. For the better part of a century, Will Durant dwelled upon—and wrote about—the most significant eras, individuals, and achievements of human history. His selections have finally been brought together in a single, compact volume. Durant eloquently defends his choices of the greatest minds and ideas, but he also stimulates readers into forming their own opinions, encouraging them to shed their surroundings and biases and enter “The Country of the Mind,” a timeless realm where the heroes of our species dwell. From a thinker who always chose to exalt the positive in the human species, The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time stays true to Durant's optimism. This is a book containing the absolute best of our heritage, passed on for the benefit of future generations. Filled with Durant's renowned wit, knowledge, and unique ability to explain events and ideas in simple and exciting terms, this is a pocket-size liberal arts and humanist curriculum in one volume.

A collection of interviews with 111 notable scientists, whose disciplines range from physics to chemistry to the biosciences, collected throughout the last 25 years.

A unique history of the Beats, in the words of the movement's most central member, Allen Ginsberg, based on a seminal series of his lectures In 1977, twenty years after the publication of his landmark poem 'Howl' and Jack Kerouac's On the Road, Allen Ginsberg decided it was time to teach a course on the literary history of the Beat Generation. Through this course, Ginsberg saw an opportunity to present a complete history of Beat Literature and also to record and preserve his own personal stories and memories, ones that might have otherwise been lost to history. The result was a deeply intimate, candid and illuminating set of lectures, which form the basis of this book. Compiled and edited by renowned Beat scholar Bill Morgan, and with an introduction by Anne Waldman, The Best Minds of My Generation presents the lectures in edited form, revealing the Beats as Ginsberg knew them: friends, confidantes, literary mentors, and fellow revolutionaries. In The Best Minds of My Generation, Ginsberg gives us the convoluted origin story of the "Beat" idea, recounts anecdotes of meeting Kerouac, Burroughs, and other figures for the first time, elucidates the importance of music, and particularly jazz rhythms, to Beat writing, discusses their many influences - literary, pharmaceutical and spiritual - and paints a portrait of a group who were leading a literary revolution. A unique document that works both as historical record and unconventional memoir, The Best Minds of My Generation is a vivid, personal and eye-opening look at one of the most important literary movements of the twentieth century.

In Conversations on Consciousness, Susan Blackmore interviews some of the great minds of our time, a who's who of eminent thinkers, all of whom have devoted much of their lives to understanding the concept of consciousness. The interviewees, ranging from major philosophers to renowned scientists, talk candidly with Blackmore about some of the key philosophical issues confronting us in a series of conversations that are revealing, insightful, and stimulating. They ruminate on the nature of consciousness (is it something apart from the brain?) and discuss if it is even possible to understand the human mind. Some of these thinkers say no, but most believe that we will pierce the mystery surrounding consciousness, and that neuroscience will provide the key. Blackmore goes beyond the issue of consciousness to ask other intriguing questions: Is there free will? (A question which yields many conflicted replies, with most saying yes and no.) If not, how does this effect the way you live your life; and more broadly, how has your work changed the way you live? Paired with an introduction and extensive glossary that provide helpful background information, these provocative conversations illuminate how some of the greatest minds tackle some of the most difficult questions about human nature.

We don’t think of imagination the way that we should. The word is often only associated with children, artists and daydreamers, but in reality, imagination is an integral part of almost every action and decision that we make. Simply put, imagination is a person’s ability to create scenarios in his or her head: this can include everything from planning a grocery list, to honing a golf swing, to having religious hallucinations. And while imagination has positive connotations, it can also lead to decreased productivity and cooperation, or worse, the continuous reliving of past trauma.The human brain is remarkable in its ability to imagine—it can imagine complex possible futures, fantasy worlds, or tasty meals. We can use our imaginations to make us relaxed or anxious. We can imagine what the world might be, and construct elaborate plans. People have been fascinated with the machination of the human brain and its ability to imagine for centuries. There are books on creativity, dreams, memory, and the mind in general, but how exactly do we create those scenes in our head? With chapters ranging from hallucination and imaginary friends to how imagination can make you happier and more productive, Jim Davies' Imagination will help us explore the full potential of our own mind.

Having a success based mindset is the essential foundation upon which you can build a life of health, wealth and achievement.