Andrew Solomon

Andrew Solomon is the author of the NY Times bestseller Far from the Tree about the intersection of difference and the family, for which he was awarded the prestigious 2013 non-fiction National Book Critics Circle Award. Mr. Solomon is a writer and lecturer on politics, culture and psychology. Solomon will be speaking at 3pm at a ticketed event in honor of Autism Pride Week. For more information visit AutismPrideWeek.org. ---

"Winner of the National Book Award for 'The Noonday Demon' and a board member of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and Columbia Medical School, Solomon began seeing illness and identity as related when he covered the deaf pride movement in the 1990s. Here, he expands on this notion by exploring how families deal with children who fall outside the perceived boundaries of normal--those with dwarfism, Down syndrome, or exceptional genius, for instance, or who commit serious crimes--showing how both family and children redefine themselves. Not specialized; there will be broad interest." (Library Journal)

"Solomon, who won the National Book Award for The Noonday Demon (2001), tackles daunting questions involving nature versus nurture, illness versus identity, and how they all affect parenting in his exhaustive but not exhausting exploration of what happens when children bear little resemblance to their parents. He begins by challenging the very concept of human reproduction. We do not reproduce, he asserts, spawning clones. We produce originals. And if we're really lucky, our offspring will be enough like us or our immediate forebears that we can easily love, nurture, understand, and respect them. But it's a crapshoot. More often than not, little junior will be born with a long-dormant recessive gene, or she may emerge from the womb with her very own, brand-new identifier -- say, deafness, physical deformity, or homosexuality. Years of interviews with families and their unique children culminate in this compassionate compendium. Solomon focuses on the creative and often desperate ways in which families manage to tear down prejudices and preconceived fears and reassemble their lives around the life of a child who alters their view of the world. Most succeed. Some don't. But the truth Solomon writes about here is as poignant as it is implacable, and he leaves us with a reinvented notion of identity and individual value." (Booklist; Starred Review)

"In Far from the Tree, Andrew Solomon reminds us that nothing is more powerful in a child's development than the love of a parent. This remarkable new book introduces us to mothers and fathers across America--many in circumstances the rest of us can hardly imagine--who are making their children feel special, no matter what challenges come their way." --President Bill Clinton

"Far from the Tree is a landmark, revolutionary book. It frames an area of inquiry--difference between parents and children--that many of us have experienced in our own lives without ever considering it as a phenomenon. Andrew Solomon plumbs his topic thoroughly, humanely, and in a compulsively readable style that makes the book as entertaining as it is illuminating." --Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad

"Andrew Solomon has written a brave and ambitious work, bringing together science, culture and a powerful empathy. Solomon tells us that we have more in common with each other--even with those who seem anything but normal--than we would ever have imagined."----Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point

"Solomon, a highly original student of human behavior, has written an intellectual history that lays the foundation for a 21st century Psychological Bill of Rights. In addition to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness on the basis of race and religion, this Bill extends inalienable rights of psychological acceptance to people on the basis of their identity. He provides us with an unrivalled educational experience about identity groups in our society, an experience that is filled with insight, empathy and intelligence. We also discover the redefining, self-restructuring nature that caring for a child produces in parents, no matter how unusual or disabled the child is. Reading "Far from the Tree" is a mind-opening experience."--Eric Kandel, author of The Age of Insight and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Location: Street: 55 Haywood St City: Asheville, Province: North Carolina Postal Code: 28801 Country: United States (added from IndieBound)… (more)

Far from the tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity Andrew Solomon A writer on politics, culture, and psychology, Andrew Solomon received a National Book Award for The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, which examined the human condition with erudition and candor. A New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist, the book received the Lambda Literary Award for Autobiography/Memoir. His other works include The Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time of Glasnost and A Stone Boat, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times First Fiction Award. In Far from the tree, he explores themes of generosity, acceptance, and love, in telling the profound stories of parents who find profound meaning in learning to deal with their exceptional children. Parkway Central Library 1901 Vine Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 (between 19th and 20th Streets on the Parkway) This is a FREE event; no tickets or reservations are required. For more information, please call 215-567-4341, or click here

Location: Street: Free Library of Philadelphia Additional: 1901 Vine Street City: Philadelphia, Province: Pennsylvania Postal Code: 19103-5207 Country: United States (added from IndieBound)… (more)

The author of The Noonday Demon returns with a “remarkable new book” (Bill Clinton) about parents and children.

“Andrew Solomon has written a brave and ambitious work, bringing together science, culture, and a powerful empathy.”--Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point

“This is one of the most extraordinary books I have read in recent times--brave, compassionate and astonishingly humane.”--Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies

This event will be held in the Hill Ballroom, on the campus of Macalester College, across the street from Common Good Books.

As a gay child of straight parents, Andrew Solomon was born with a condition that was considered an illness, but it became a cornerstone of his identity. While reporting on the explosion of Deaf pride in the 1990s, he began to consider illness and identity as a continuum with shifting boundaries. Spurred by the disability-rights movement and empowered by the Internet, communities with such “horizontal identities” are challenging expectations and norms.

In twelve astonishingly acute and empathetic chapters, Far from the tree tells stories of individuals who have been heartbreakingly tragic victims of intense prejudice, but also stories of parents who have embraced their childrens' differences and tried to alter the world's understanding of their conditions. Their stories begin in families coping with extreme difference: dwarfism, Down syndrome, autism, multiple severe disabilities, or prodigious genius; children conceived in rape, or who identify as transgender; children who develop schizophrenia or commit serious crimes. The adage asserts that the apple doesn’t fall Far from the tree, but in Solomon’s explorations, some apples fall on the other side of the world.

For ten years, interviewing more than 250 families, Solomon has observed not just how some families learn to deal with exceptional children, but also how they find profound meaning in doing so. An utterly original thinker, Solomon mines the eloquence of ordinary people who have somehow summoned hope and courage in the face of heartbreaking prejudice and almost unimaginable difficulty.

Visit www.farfromthetree.com for more information, videos, and stories from Andrew Solomon's new book..

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Andrew Solomon’s earlier book, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, has won fourteen national awards, including the 2001 National Book Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The NY Times review described it as “All-encompassing, brave, deeply humane...a book of remarkable depth, breadth and vitality...open-minded, critically informed and poetic all at the same time...fearless, and full of compassion.” Mr. Solomon has lectured on depression around the world, including recent stints at Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Cambridge, and the Library of Congress.

Location: Street: Hill Ballroom, Macalester College, 1600 Grand Ave City: Saint Paul, Province: Minnesota Postal Code: 55105 Country: United States (added from IndieBound)… (more)

Solomon’s new book does for identity what his classic The noonday demon did for depression. Intertwining his own experiences as a gay son of straight parents with similar “mismatches” of progenitors and offspring in some 250 other families, Solomon explores a wide range of differences, from disabilities to genius, sexual orientation to schizophrenia, and examines what these mean for individuals and for society.

Street: 5015 Connecticut Ave NW City: Washington, Province: District Of Columbia Postal Code: 20008 Country: United States (added from IndieBound)… (more)