Praise for Monkey Mind
“In this unforgettable, surprisingly hilarious memoir, journalist and professor Smith chronicles his head-clanging, flop-sweating battles with acute anxiety. . . . He’s clear-eyed and funny about his condition’s painful absurdities.”
—People (four stars)
“This book will change the way you think about anxiety. . . . Daniel Smith’s writing dazzled me. . . . Painful experiences are described with humor, and complex ideas are made accessible. . . .Monkey Mind is a rare gem.”
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Monkey Mind [is] fleet, funny, and productively exhausting.”
—Ben Greenman, The New York Times Book Review
“You’ll laugh out loud many times during Daniel Smith’s Monkey Mind. . . . In the time-honored tradition of leavening pathos with humor, Smith has managed to create a memoir that doesn’t entirely let him off the hook for bad behavior . . . but promotes understanding of the similarly afflicted.”
—O Magazine
“Smith does a skillful job of dissecting the mechanics of anxiety as well as placing the reader in his fitful shoes.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Monkey Mind [is] a balance of the devastating and the devastatingly hilarious. As Smith traces his ongoing battle with clinical anxiety, we learn just how disruptive and downright crippling the struggle can be—and how difficult it can be to acknowledge and diagnose, let alone begin to understand and treat.”
“[Smith] adroitly dissects his relentless mental and physical symptoms with intelligence and humor. . . . [An] intimate and touching journey through one man’s angst-ridden life.”
—The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
“Here’s one less thing for Daniel Smith to worry about: He sure can write. In Monkey Mind, a memoir of his lifelong struggles with anxiety, he defangs the experience with a winning combination of humor and understanding.”
—Heller McAlpin, NPR.org
“For fellow anxiety-sufferers, it’s like finding an Anne of Green Gables–style kindred spirit.”
—New York magazine’s Vulture.com
“[Monkey Mind] will be recognized in the years to come as the preeminent first-person narrative of the anxiously lived life.”
—Psychiatric Times
“The book is one man’s story, but at its core it’s about all of us.”
—Booklist
“A true treasure-trove of insight laced with humor and polished prose.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“I read Monkey Mind with admiration for its bravery and clarity. Daniel Smith’s anxiety is matched by a wonderful sense of the comic, and it is this which makes Monkey Mind not only a dark, pain-filled book but a hilariously funny one, too. I broke out into explosive laughter again and again.”
—Oliver Sacks, bestselling author of The Mind’s Eye and Musicophilia
“You don’t need a Jewish mother, or a profound sweating problem, to feel Daniel Smith’s pain in Monkey Mind. His memoir treats what must be the essential ailment of our time—chronic anxiety—and it does so with wisdom, honesty, and the kind of belly laughs that can only come from troubles transformed.”
—Chad Harbach, author of The Art of Fielding
“Daniel Smith maps the jagged contours of anxiety with such insight, humor, and compassion that the result is, oddly, calming. There are countless gems in these pages, including a fresh take on the psychopathology of chronic nail biting, an ill-fated ménage á trois—and the funniest perspiration scene since Albert Brooks’s sweaty performance in Broadcast News. Read this book. You have nothing to lose but your heart palpitations, and your Xanax habit.”
—Eric Weiner, author of The Geography of Bliss
“I don’t know Daniel Smith, but I do want to give him a hug. His book is so bracingly honest, so hilarious, so sharp, it’s clear there’s one thing he doesn’t have to be anxious about: whether or not he’s a great writer.”
—A.J. Jacobs, author of Drop Dead Healthy and The Year of Living Biblically
“Daniel Smith has written a wise, funny book, a great mix of startling memoir and fascinating medical and literary history, all of it delivered with humor and a true generosity of spirit. I only got anxious in the last part, when I worried the book would end. Of course, it did, but Smith’s hopeful last chapters helped me cope.”
—Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land and The Ask