Bipolar Disorder

"The author lures us into her Bipolar world by injecting humor into the serious subject of mental illness. She acts as a tour guide and takes the reader on her manic journey and then steers us straight into the abyss of her depression." --Diane Urban, PhD, NYS Licensed Psychologist, Adjunct Professor at Manhattan College and Westchester Community College, SUNY"MY KIND OF CRAZY is an important contribution which sheds light on the often hidden world of mental illness. The line between reality and psychosis is impossible to comprehend unless one has seen the world from both perspectives. The author unlocks the door to a locked psychiatric facility and allows the reader cross the threshold. The story is further enhanced by glimpses of her experience through the eyes of her husband and son." --William M. Dince, Phd, NYS Clinical Psychologist and Clinical Neuropsychologist

Invisible Driving is a memoir of Manic Depression that takes readers inside the terrors, thrills, and triumphs of coming to terms with this debilitating and misunderstood mental illness. The manic narrator's voice vividly recreates the feelings and sensations of mania, offering an unprecedented look at this fascinating and bizarre state of being. While behavior and thought illuminate the condition of mania, it is the protagonist's language itself that most viscerally conveys what it feels like to be trapped inside a manic 'high.' The voice of the recovered narrator provides context, reliability, and credibility. Where the manic narrator is relentlessly entertaining and delusional, the recovered narrator is tough minded, concise, and determined to reveal the truth, no matter how painful. With a cold eye he examines the forces that shaped him in order to shed light on the psychological architecture driving the episode. The interplay between these two perspectives underscores the bipolar nature of Manic Depression; the greatest personal challenge is reconciling them. Ultimately, the narrator must confront his own worst nightmare and in doing so gain character, insight, and acceptance.

Celebrated humorist and columnist Susan Reinhardt hits another homerun with "Don't Sleep with a Bubba," the follow-up collection of wild and heartfelt stories to "Not Tonight Wait 'Til I"m a Size 6." In "Don't Sleep with a Bubba," she runs into her usual hilarious suspects: the dog that underwent liposuction of the "private parts," the drunk that got a DWI on horseback while getting a Happy Meal on his steed at the drive-thru, and her crazy sister's antics, which include painting her grass green in the winter, selling Jesus pancakes on eBay, and her outrageous pre-school teaching practices. While most of Reinhardt's stories are colorful and hilarious, she goes into a deeper side with this new book and reveals her horror with a date rape at a frat house when she was 17, and a nine-day stay in a psyche ward for a plunging depression. Vivid, candid and heartfelt, her stories will both entertain and inspire.