The Recovering Intoxication and its Aftermath

Jamison, Leslie

ISBN 10: 0316259616 / ISBN 13: 9780316259613

Published by Little, Brown and Company, New York, NY, 2018

About this Item

6.625 X 1.25 X 9.5 inches; 534 pages; One line in the bibliography was highlighted. Very minor rubbing on DJ and inside the DJ. Very minor dust smudges on the top exterior edge of textblock. Very Good condition otherwise. No other noteworthy defects. No markings. Minor yellowing on pages. ; - Your satisfaction is our priority. We offer free returns and respond promptly to all inquiries. Your item will be carefully cushioned in bubble wrap and securely boxed. All orders ship on the same or next business day. Buy with confidence.

Seller Inventory # HVD-56007-A-0

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Recovering Intoxication and its Aftermath
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, New York, NY
• Publication Date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0316259616
• ISBN 13: 9780316259613
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition; Third Printing.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Empathy Exams comes this transformative work showing that sometimes the recovery is more gripping than the addiction.

With its deeply personal and seamless blend of memoir, cultural history, literary criticism, and reportage, The Recovering turns our understanding of the traditional addiction narrative on its head, demonstrating that the story of recovery can be every bit as electrifying as the train wreck itself. Leslie Jamison deftly excavates the stories we tell about addiction -- both her own and others' -- and examines what we want these stories to do and what happens when they fail us. All the while, she offers a fascinating look at the larger history of the recovery movement, and at the complicated bearing that race and class have on our understanding of who is criminal and who is ill.

At the heart of the book is Jamison's ongoing conversation with literary and artistic geniuses whose lives and works were shaped by alcoholism and substance dependence, including John Berryman, Jean Rhys, Billie Holiday, Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson, and David Foster Wallace, as well as brilliant lesser-known figures such as George Cain, lost to obscurity but newly illuminated here. Through its unvarnished relation of Jamison's own ordeals, The Recovering also becomes a book about a different kind of dependency: the way our desires can make us all, as she puts it, "broken spigots of need." It's about the particular loneliness of the human experience-the craving for love that both devours us and shapes who we are.

For her striking language and piercing observations, Jamison has been compared to such iconic writers as Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, yet her utterly singular voice also offers something new. With enormous empathy and wisdom, Jamison has given us nothing less than the story of addiction and recovery in America writ large, a definitive and revelatory account that will resonate for years to come.

About the Author

Leslie Jamison is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Recovering and The Empathy Exams, and the novel The Gin Closet. She is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, and her work has appeared in publications including The Atlantic, Harper's, the New York Times Book Review, the Oxford American, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. She directs the graduate nonfiction program at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn with her family.