Self-Destruction Promised Land

"A work of subtle insights and of bold illumination, written with persuasive eloquence; it should become a classic in its field."--William Styron

"Will rush to the top of the list of important books on psychohistory . . . balanced and provocative . . . it's a blockbuster."--Carl N. Degler, Stanford University

"An illuminating overview of the prevailing understanding of suicide over the past 300 years, tracing current theories back, in some cases, to their roots in Puritan New England. [Kushner] shows how the conflicting views of psychology, sociology, and biochemistry emerged and hardened into dogmatic theories within each discipline that impeded cross-pollination. . . . Fascinating stuff."--San Diego Tribune

"Outstanding . . . the only work I know that is adequate to the complexity and multidimensionality of suicide, and which genuinely combines, indeed synthesizes, a wide range of disciplinary perspectives into a coherent and satisfying view of the issues. . . . a tour de force."--Joel Kovel, M. D.

Howard I. Kushner is the Nat C. Robertson Distinguished Professor of ScienceSociety Emeritus at Emory University where he held a joint appointments as Professor in, the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education in Rollins School of Public Health and in Emory’s Programs Human Health and in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. Kushner, a historian of medicine and neuroscience, is author of four books, including American Suicide: A Psychocultural Exploration (1991) and A Cursing Brain? The Histories of Tourette Syndrome (1999) and numerous articles on medical history in journals including Lancet, the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Perspectives in Biology& Medicine, Journal of the History of Medicine, Journal of Pediatric Infectious Disease, Laterality, and Pediatric Cardiology. Kushner’s research has included a collaborative study of Kawasaki Disease, with colleagues from the University of California, San Diego, funded by a series of grants including the National Institutes of Health, the National Library of Medicine, and the Kawasaki Disease Foundation. Kushner also has published a series of articles on addiction and its relationship to self-medication. Supported by a grant from the Engelhard Foundation, Kushner was a co-convener of the “Conference on Addiction, the Brain, and Culture” held at Emory in February 2009, and co-editor of a special issue of BioSocieties, 5 (March 2010) entitled “Drugs, addiction and society.”