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JUST LIKE SOMEONE WITHOUT MENTAL ILLNESS ONLY MORE SO
By: Mark Vonnegut
Random House
October 2010
On Sale: October 5, 2010
224 pages
ISBN: 0385343795
EAN: 9780385343794
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
More than thirty years after the publication of his acclaimed memoir The Eden Express, Mark Vonnegut continues his remarkable story in this searingly funny, iconoclastic account of coping with mental illness, finding his calling as a pediatrician, and learning that willpower isnβt nearly enough.
Here is Markβs childhood spent as the son of a struggling writer in a house that eventually held seven children after his aunt and uncle died and left four orphans. And here is the world after Mark was released from a mental hospital to find his family forever altered. At the late age of twenty-eightβand after nineteen rejectionsβMark was accepted to Harvard Medical School, where he gained purpose, a life, and some control over his condition. The brilliantly evoked events of Mark Vonnegutβs life are at once perfectly unique and achingly relatable. There are the manic episodes, during which he felt burdened with saving the world, juxtaposed against the real-world responsibilities of running a pediatric practice. At times he felt that his parentsβ lives would improve if only they had a few hundred more bucks in their bank account, while at other points his fatherβs fame merely heightened expectations that he be better, funnier (and crazier) than the average person.
Ultimately a tribute to the small, daily, and positive parts of a life interrupted by bipolar disorder, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So is a wise, unsentimental, and inspiring book that will resonate with generations of readers.
 Media BuzzDiane Rehm Show - NPR - November 8, 2010
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