Solomon, A: Far from the Tree

Andrew Solomon is a writer and activist working on politics, culture and psychology. He writes regularly for the New Yorker, Newsweek, and the Guardian. He is a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Cornell University and Special Adviser on LGBT Affairs to Yale University's Department of Psychiatry. The Noonday Demon won the 2001 National Book Award and was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize. His highly-acclaimed study of family, Far from the Tree won the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Non-fiction, the Lukas Book Prize and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, among others. He lives with his husband and son in New York and London.

"Far from the Tree is a landmark, revolutionary book. 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 "One of the most extraordinary books I have read in recent times - brave, compassionate and astonishingly humane. Solomon approaches one of the oldest questions - how much are we defined by nature versus nurture? - and crafts from it a gripping narrative. Through his stories, told with such masterful delicacy and lucidity, we learn how different we all are, and how achingly similar. I could not put this book down." -- Siddhartha Mukherjee "A passionate and affecting work that will shake up your preconceptions and leave you in a better place. It's a book everyone should read. there's no one who wouldn't be a more imaginative and understanding parent - or human being - for having done so. breathtaking reading." -- Julie Myerson New York Times "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 - 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 "Parenting," writes Andrew Solomon in Far from the Tree, "is no sport for perfectionists." It's an irony of the book, 10 years in the making and his first since The Noonday Demon, that by militating against perfectionism, he only leaves the reader in greater awe of the art of the achievable. The book starts out as a study of parents raising "difficult" children, and ends up as an affirmation of what it is to be human." -- Emma Brockes Guardian