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  • Monkey Mind

  • A Memoir of Anxiety
  • By: Daniel Smith
  • Narrated by: Richard Powers
  • Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
  • 3.4 out of 5 stars (11 ratings)
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Monkey Mind

By: Daniel Smith
Narrated by: Richard Powers
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Summary

In the insightful narrative tradition of Oliver Sacks, Monkey Mind is an uplifting, smart, and very funny memoir of life with anxiety - America’s most common psychological complaint. 

We all think we know what being anxious feels like - it is the instinct that made us run from wolves in the prehistoric age and pushes us to perform in the modern one - but for forty million American adults, anxiety is an insidious condition that defines daily life. Yet no popular memoir has been written about that experience until now. Aaron Beck, the most influential doctor in modern psychotherapy, says that “Monkey Mind does for anxiety what William Styron’s Darkness Visible did for depression.” 

In Monkey Mind, Daniel Smith brilliantly articulates what it is like to live with anxiety, defanging the disease with humor, traveling through its demonic layers, evocatively expressing both its painful internal coherence and its absurdities. He also draws on its most storied sufferers to trace anxiety’s intellectual history and its influence on our time. Here, finally, comes relief and recognition to millions of people who have wanted someone to put into words what they and their loved ones feel. 

Daniel B. Smith is the author of Muses, Madmen, and Prophets and a contributor to numerous publications, including the American Scholar, Atlantic, New York Times Magazine, and Slate.

©2012 Daniel Smith (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“You don’t need a Jewish mother, or a profound sweating problem, to feel Daniel Smith’s pain in  Monkey Mind. His memoir treats what must be the essential ailment of our time - anxiety - and it does so with wisdom, honesty, and the kind of belly laughs that can only come from troubles transformed.” (Chad Harbach,  New York Times best-selling author of  The Art of Fielding)
“I don’t know Daniel Smith, but I do want to give him a hug. His book is so bracingly honest, so hilarious, so sharp, it’s clear there’s one thing he doesn’t have to be anxious about: whether or not he’s a great writer.” (A. J. Jacobs,  New York Times best-selling author of  The Year of Living Biblically)
“Daniel Smith maps the jagged contours of anxiety with such insight, humor, and compassion that the result is, oddly, calming. There are countless gems in these pages, including a fresh take on the psychopathology of chronic nail biting, an ill-fated ménage à trois - and the funniest perspiration scene since Albert Brooks’ sweaty performance in Broadcast News. Read this book. You have nothing to lose but your heart palpitations, and your Xanax habit.”(Eric Weiner, New York Times bestselling author of The Geography of Bliss

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

funny and human

I enjoyed this book a lot. very humbling, clever and comical
I think I expected more but still very good

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Good but drags a little

Great and relatable story explaining of how anxiety and panic attacks feel and how they come about. However, large portions of the story felt like they dragged out for long long time to come to the point at hand.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Relatable and funny

There is a part in the middle that I struggled to listen to, just very tedious. The beginning and the end was good though.

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