Andy Warhol Was a Hoarder: Inside the Minds of History's Great Personalities by Claudia KalbMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a fun, easy read where each chapter is a famous person that suffered with a mental condition that would have got them diagnosed under some edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Primary Care Version. Marilyn Monroe: crippling, career-limiting identity crisis; Howard Hughes OCD; Andy Warhol hoarder; Diana Princess of Wales was an anorexic, bulimic and sometimes cutter; and Abraham Lincoln a noted depressive. Christine Jorgensen was an American trans woman who was the first person to become widely known in the United States for having sex reassignment surgery. "Gender dysphoria" is the label this troubled pioneer gets here. Betty Ford substance abuse and Frank Lloyd Wright a narcissism that caused him to house his customers under expensive leaky roofs and be the basis for Howard Roark in The Fountainhead. Charles Darwin could have been dealing with many things giving him incapacitating panic and the author of The Gambler had a gambling addiction. George Gershwin perhaps wouldn't have given us An American in Paris nor Albert Einstein General Relativity had Adderall and Ritalin been available. At least, that's my opinion after reading this and Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America.
(I received the book for free through Goodreads First Reads.)
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