Andrew Solomon has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 1 narrator, with an average listener rating of 4.2★ across 49 ratings. The most-rated is The Noonday Demon.
The Noonday Demon
Summary
With uncommon humanity, candor, wit, and erudition, National Book Award-winner Andrew Solomon takes the listener on a journey of incomparable range and resonance into the most pervasive of family secrets. The Noonday Demon examines depression in personal, cultural, and scientific terms. Drawing on his own struggles with the illness and interviews wit fellow sufferers, doctors and scientists, policymakers and politicians, drug designers and philosophers, Solomon reveals the subtle complexities and sheer agony of the disease. He confronts the challenge of defining the illness and describes the vast range of available medications, the efficacy of alternative treatments, and the impact the malady has had on various demographic populations around the world and throughout history. He also explores the thorny patch of moral and ethical questions posed by emerging biological explanations for mental illness. The depth of human experience Solomon chronicles, the range of his intelligence, and his boundless curiosity and compassion will change the listener's view of the world.
©2004 Andrew Solomon (P)2004 Simon & Schuster
Far from the Tree
Summary
National Book Critics Circle Award, Nonfiction, 2013 From the National Book Award-winning author of the "brave...deeply humane...open-minded, critically informed, and poetic" (The New York Times) The Noonday Demon, comes a game-changer of a book about the impact of extreme personal and cultural difference between parents and children. A brilliant and utterly original thinker, Andrew Solomon's journey began from his experience of being the gay child of straight parents. He wondered how other families accommodate children who have a variety of differences: families of people who are deaf, who are dwarfs, who have Down syndrome, who have autism, who have schizophrenia, who have multiple severe disabilities, who are prodigies, who commit crimes, who are transgender. Bookended with Solomon's experiences as a son, and then later as a father, this book explores the old adage that says the apple doesn't fall far from the tree; instead some apples fall a couple of orchards away, some on the other side of the world. In 12 sharply observed and moving chapters, Solomon describes individuals who have been heartbreaking victims of intense prejudice, but also stories of parents who have embraced their childrens' differences and tried to change the world's understanding of their conditions. Solomon's humanity, eloquence, and compassion give a voice to those people who are never heard. A riveting, powerful take on a major social issue, Far from the Tree offers far-reaching conclusions about new families, academia, and the way our culture addresses issues of illness and identity.
©2012 Andrew Solomon (P)2012 Simon & Schuster, Inc
New Family Values
Summary
Drawing on dozens of intimate audio interviews with families from all across the country, award-winning psychologist and writer Andrew Solomon redefines what it means to be an “ideal family” in America today. Solomon observes that America, led in large part by the women’s, civil rights, and gay rights movements, has undergone a radical social shift in the last few decades. While three-quarters of American children lived in families with two (first-time) married, heterosexual parents in the 1960s, today less than half do. The conventional family, Solomon argues, has broken into a multitude of perfect families, including gay families, multiparent families, adoptive families, foster families, families built through assisted reproduction, single parent-headed families, and child-free families. Although the structure of family has changed, economic and legal structures lag behind and need to adapt to accommodate this explosive new reality.
©2018 Audible Originals, LLC (P)2018 Audible Originals, LLC.
Far and Away
Summary
From the winner of the National Book Award and the National Books Critics' Circle Award - and one of the most original thinkers of our time - a riveting collection of essays about places in dramatic transition. Far and Away collects Andrew Solomon's writings about places undergoing seismic shifts - political, cultural, and spiritual. Chronicling his stint on the barricades in Moscow in 1991, when he joined artists in resisting the coup whose failure ended the Soviet Union; his 2002 account of the rebirth of culture in Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban; his insightful appraisal of a Myanmar steeped in contradictions as it slowly, fitfully pushes toward freedom; and many other stories of profound upheaval, this book provides a unique window onto the very idea of social change. With his signature brilliance and compassion, Solomon demonstrates both how history is altered by individuals and how personal identities are altered when governments alter. A journalist and essayist of remarkable perception and prescience, Solomon captures the essence of these cultures. Ranging across seven continents and 25 years, Far and Away takes a magnificent journey into the heart of extraordinarily diverse experiences, yet Solomon finds a common humanity wherever he travels. Illuminating the development of his own genius, his stories are always intimate and often both funny and deeply moving.
©2016 Andrew Solomon (P)2016 Simon & Schuster, Inc.