Christopher Lane's SHYNESS in Chicago Tribune

Psychiatric manual's update needs openness, not secrecy, critics say
Edition is being prepared with strict oversight, officials counter

By Ron Grossman | Tribune reporter
December 27, 2008

Whether revisions to the "bible" of mental illness should be carried out in secret might seem like an academic question.

But the issue carries real weight for parents desperate to address children's difficult behavior or people in distress over their mental state. It also speaks to citizens' concerns over news accounts of an overmedicated America and the troubling financial links between the pharmaceutical industry and some psychiatric researchers.

An update is under way for the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as the DSM, which defines the emotional problems for which doctors prescribe drugs and insurance companies pay the bills. Psychiatrists working on the new manual were required to sign a strict confidentiality agreement.

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Christopher Lane's SHYNESS reviewed in the New York Review of Books

Volume 56, Number 1 · January 15, 2009, The New York Review of Books
Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption
By Marcia Angell

Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial
by Alison Bass

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 260 pp., $24.95
Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs
by Melody Petersen

Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 432 pp., $26.00
Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness
by Christopher Lane

Yale University Press, 263 pp., $27.50; $18.00 (paper)

Recently Senator Charles Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has been looking into financial ties between the pharmaceutical industry and the academic physicians who largely determine the market value of prescription drugs. He hasn't had to look very hard.

Take the case of Dr. Joseph L. Biederman, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and chief of pediatric psychopharmacology at Harvard's Massachusetts General Hospital. Thanks largely to him, children as young as two years old are now being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with a cocktail of powerful drugs, many of which were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for that purpose and none of which were approved for children below ten years of age.

Legally, physicians may use drugs that have already been approved for a particular purpose for any other purpose they choose, but such use should be based on good published scientific evidence. That seems not to be the case here. Biederman's own studies of the drugs he advocates to treat childhood bipolar disorder were, as The New York Times summarized the opinions of its expert sources, "so small and loosely designed that they were largely inconclusive."[1]

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Marni Sandweiss, author of PASSING STRANGE, Q&A in PW

Passing Strange
by Parul Sehgal -- Publishers Weekly, 12/22/2008

In Passing Strange (Reviews, Dec. 1), Sandweiss uncovers the double life of Clarence King, the renowned geologist who mapped the American West—and crossed color lines, passing as a black Pullman porter, James Todd, to marry Ada Copeland, a black nursemaid.

How did you come across this story?

I read Thurman Wilkins's spectacular biography of Clarence King in graduate school. It haunted me. Reading Philip Roth's wonderful The Human Stain got me thinking again, as did the Clinton scandal: Clinton messed up for 30 minutes and the story was spread around the world. King sustained a secret life for 13 years. So I sat down one day to see if there was anything I could do with the story. In five minutes I found the census document of King reporting to be black.

King's life reads like a Who's Who of the time: Henry Adams, Henry James, John Hayes—

James Weldon Johnson! Who would have thought? And Frederick Douglass. It's like six degrees of Clarence King. In the 19th century, he would have been on the cover of [the equivalent of] People magazine, but when the story came out in the 1930s, he had dropped out of public consciousness.

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Richard Ford's THE RACE CARD a Slate Best Book of '08

Pad Out Your Amazon Wish ListSlate picks the best books of 2008.
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2008, at 7:40 AM ET

Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor
Amid a flock of excellent legal books this year, two are really outstanding in my view. The first is Jane Mayer's The Dark Side. The second is my former law professor Richard Ford's The Race Card. Ford asks a simple question: How can claims of racism—in the courtroom, the media, and casual conversation—be so pervasive in America if so few of us are racists? His answers are provocative: Much of what we call racism is the result of racist decisions made decades ago with respect to housing, education, or urban planning. Cab drivers who refuse to pick up black men may be motivated by factors beyond racial hate—like not wanting to drop someone off in a bad part of town. The Race Card advances a debate that has been mired in reductive thinking for decades. You won't agree with Ford on everything. But you may find yourself thinking differently about everything. And that's my definition of a great book.

NYTs Book Blog: "My advice: buy Galbraith."

The Return of John Kenneth Galbraith
By Barry Gewen
Papercuts, December 17, 2008

When Milton Friedman’s stock is high, John Kenneth Galbraith’s is low, and vice versa. These past few months, as the federal government has injected billions of dollars into the economy, with many billions more to come, Friedman’s free-market ideas have taken a beating. My advice: buy Galbraith.

The downfall of Friedmanism, I would say, came on the day Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke marched into the Oval Office and convinced President Bush that the financial crisis was so severe the government had no choice but to intervene, and in a massive way. Markets could not be allowed to clear, Friedman-style, without bringing the roof down on everyone’s head. And once the Republican party’s Wall Street establishment came on board, almost the only Friedmanites left — at least until the failure of the auto industry bailout — were rural outliers like Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky, crying in the wilderness about “socialism.” (There were, of course, other critics of the Bush bailouts, but they were populists, not Friedmanites, distressed that all that taxpayer money was going to the top, not the middle and bottom. That’s a different story.)

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Rachel Herz's THE SCENT OF DESIRE Recommended for Younger Readers by SCIENCE magazine

Science Books for Fun and Learning—Some Recommendations from 2008
Science, December 5, 2008

Far from a prissy survey of perfumes and odor—it starts with the suicide of a rock singer who had lost his sense of smell—this book explores how and why smell is such a central component of our lives. Explaining basic neurobiological principles in clear language, Herz intermixes them with stories and personal accounts of her research and experiences. She describes olfactory technologies, such as the development of electronic noses, that are already beginning to be used in the food industry and might even help diagnose diseases. She also dreams of a gel that would boost olfactory receptor function and restore sensation to older individuals. Her account will stimulate readers' interests in psychology and neuroscience.

The full list of recommended books is restricted to magazine subscribers, but to see a summary, click here.

Deborah Cramer's SMITHSONIAN OCEAN excerpted in SCIENCE NEWS magazine

Science Notebook: Scientific Observations
Science News, November 22, 2008

In a section excerpted from Smithsonian Ocean, Deborah Cramer observes how carbon—one of the building blocks of life—links us to the planet's past:

"Carbon is the foundation of life. It exists in every living organism, in every cell. While some is stilled, preserved in fossils over long stretches of time, most is continually recycled.... Humans are mostly water and, after that, carbon—carbon that has been passed down through the ages, from the flesh of a fish, the ear of an elephant, the leaves of a plant. Somewhere in each of us is a cell whose carbon elements may have nourished the planet's nascent life."

To check out the rest of the issue, click here.

Richard Thompson Ford's THE RACE CARD a NY TIMES Notable Book of 2008

100 Notable Books of 2008
The New York Times, November 26, 2008

The New York Times selected Richard Thompson Ford's The Race Card, in which "Ford vivisects every sacred cow in 'post-racist' America", as one of their 100 Notable Books of 2008.

To see the full list, click here.

Anthony Lewis's FREEDOM FOR THE THOUGHT THAT WE HATE a Best Book of 2008 in THE ECONOMIST

Pick of the Pile
The Economist, December 2, 2008

In this year's selection of best books, The Economist chose Anthony Lewis's Freedom for the Thought that We Hate for providing a "concise and wise presentation of the history and scope of freedom of thought in the United States, with conclusions that are well worth pondering."

To see the full list, click here.

Benjamin Taylor's THE BOOK OF GETTING EVEN a LA TIMES Favorite Book for 2008

Favorite Books 2008: The Book of Getting Even
LA Times, December 7, 2008

Alongside Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison and National Book Award-winner Peter Matthiessen, Benjamin Taylor's The Book of Getting Even was selected by the LA Times as a Favorite Book of 2008.

To see the full list, click here.

Moying Li's SNOW FALLING IN SPRING Selected as Best Book by Bloomsbury Review

Editors' Favorites 2008: Snow Falling In Spring
The Bloomsbury Review

In this year's roundups of notable and favorite books, The Bloomsbury Review selected Moying Li's Snow Falling In Spring, an inspiring memoir of a girl's coming-of-age during China's Cultural Revolution, as a favorite book for 2008!

Deborah Cramer's SMITHSONIAN OCEAN a USA TODAY Critic's Pick

Critic's picks: Coffee-table books for the holidays
USA Today, December 3

Holiday shopping got you anxious?

USA Today comes to the rescue with a handy gift guide that will satisfy all your bookworm friends, from the fashionista to the animal lover. For the environmentalist in your life, this holiday season's "it" book is Deborah Cramer's Smithsonian Ocean.

To check out USA Today's review and the full list, click here.

RACHEL HERZ on NPR's Talk of the Nation

From Brain to Plate: Psychology of Holiday Meals
NPR, Talk of the Nation, November 28

Why is it so important to have turkey and stuffing on Thanksgiving? A panel of psychologists, including Rachel Herz, author of The Scent of Desire, discusses how mood, memory and sense of smell can influence what ends up on the dinner table.

To listen to the NPR clip, click here