Hidden Valley Road

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

How a family's Greek tragedy-level suffering led family members to embark on different life journeys, being destroyed, changed, and repaired...
How can we provide excellent opportunities for medical research and light a glimmer of hope for all patients' families?
A stirring medical exploration and a touching story of a family's struggle against fate - Oprah Winfrey
【Content Introduction】
To outsiders, the Calvin family in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is a perfect middle-class family: the husband, Dawn, is an enthusiastic and confident Air Force Academy officer, his wife, Mimi, is a lady from an upper-class family in Texas, and they have 12 lovely children.
But beneath this glitz and glamour, a force surged beyond the couple's comprehension. In just ten years, six of their twelve children developed severe schizophrenia, while the other six waited in fear, expecting to be the next, awaiting even more pain and harm. For over half a century, madness, humiliation, and violence never spared this family, and the consequences were far more than self-harm and murder. Based on interviews with all surviving individuals and extensive medical archives, author Robert Kolker recounts with compassion and empathy the unfolding story of schizophrenia's engulfing of this family.
While enduring immense suffering, this unique family also offers a glimmer of hope in the search for the causes and treatments of schizophrenia. Using the Galvin family's story as a framework, Kolker weaves together the past century of medical debate and debate on the causes of schizophrenia, the evolution of treatments, and the social prejudice and discrimination against schizophrenia patients and their families. From the disagreements and splits between Freud and Jung to a generation of therapists blaming the "schizophrenia mother" for the disease, from theorists' abandonment of the concept of illness and their obsession with subverting it to medical researchers' unraveling the biological roots of the disease, the book chronicles them all. Ultimately, Hidden Valley Road focuses on a few medical researchers, depicting their tireless efforts over decades to unravel the mysteries of schizophrenia, using this unique family as a model, and the twists and turns and breakthroughs in the discovery of schizophrenia susceptibility genes.
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【Editor's Recommendation】
★ Sweeping the 2020 best book lists of almost all famous European and American media: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Time, The Times...
★ Beating former US President Barack Obama's memoir "A Promised Land" to top the New York Times' list of the top ten nonfiction books of 2020★ Former US President Obama's favorite book of 2020★ Amazon's best nonfiction book of 2020★ The only nonfiction narrative work (excluding memoirs) selected to Oprah's Book Club in its 25-year history
★ Finalist for the 2021 PEN American Nonfiction Award and shortlisted for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Outstanding Book ★ Recommended by Lu Lin, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and dean of Peking University Sixth Hospital, with a preface ★ Highly recommended by Li Lingjiang, professor of the Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University and chairman of the Psychiatry Branch of the Chinese Medical Association, Li Qingchen, popular science writer and author of "Legends of the Heart", and Qiu Zilong, senior researcher at the Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and deputy director of the State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience
【Recommended by media and scholars】
A masterpiece of narrative journalism and a study in empathy, Robert Kolker tells the story of the Calvin family with compassion while also charting the scientific progress in diagnosing and treating schizophrenia. —The New York Times
It is bound to become a classic of narrative nonfiction. —Minneapolis Star Tribune
An outstanding case study and a masterpiece of investigative reporting. —Sylvia Nasar, author of "A Beautiful Mind: A Biography of Steve Nash," winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Critics Circle Award. From a contemporary scientific perspective, schizophrenia is the result of a combination of genetic predisposition and adverse experiences during an individual's upbringing. However, to find a way to help patients free themselves from their inner demons and alleviate the torment inflicted by the disease, the difficult task of understanding and empathizing with the "madness" of the patient from a normal perspective is sometimes more meaningful than trying to identify the causative gene. "Hidden Valley Road," with its detailed portrayal of the experiences of a family with a high incidence of schizophrenia, may be just such a remedy, and I believe its impact in this regard will far exceed understanding the disease itself. —Li Lingjiang, Professor at the Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University and Chairman of the Chinese Medical Association's Psychiatry Branch. In my work at the Children's Hospital, I have encountered families similar to those described in "Hidden Valley Road," but the suffering revealed in this book is many times more profound than I had previously understood. Human happiness has its upper limits, but the abyss of suffering is unfathomable, with ever greater suffering unbearable to contemplate. But confronting such suffering is essential for conquering it. We are grateful to the scientists and doctors who have faced and conquered this suffering with unparalleled courage. Those tragically afflicted with such hidden illnesses should not be viewed as monsters, isolated and abandoned by society, but as individuals suffering from great misfortune, desperately in need of salvation. —Li Qingchen, surgeon, popular science writer, and author of "Legends of the Heart." Schizophrenia is the first brain disease in modern medical history to be discovered to be linked to genetic factors. The 20th century, the period of this book, was also a time of human society's love-hate relationship with heredity and genes. From the initial cult of genes to the post-Nazi era, when everyone remained silent about the genetic causes of disease, modern medical research on schizophrenia unfolded within this context. "The Road to the Hidden Valley" provides an excellent resource for the study of schizophrenia, following a large family afflicted by the disease. As the mystery of schizophrenia gradually unravels, doctors have also discovered various medications that can gradually alleviate the suffering of schizophrenia patients. Humanity may not be able to cure schizophrenia for the time being, but the diligent exploration of countless doctors and scientists will eventually free humanity from the troubles of mental illness. —Qiu Zilong, Senior Researcher at the Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Deputy Director of the State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience

2021-10-01

中信出版集团

New Thought Culture

448

9787521735147