Sisters of mercy
How do you ask a nun for her brain? John McCrone finds light shed on Alzheimer's in an astonishing study, Aging With Grace by David Snowdon
Doctors’ disorders
Tim Radford revisits a dark age of quacks and quips in Bodies Politic: Disease, Death and Doctors in Britain 1650-1900 by Roy Porter
The fright of your life
Spiders, snakes, premature burial - Harriet Stewart faces our worst fears with Phobias: Fighting the Fear by Helen Saul and Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear by Jan Bondeson
Drowned at midday
Ian Penman hails a perplexed investigation of melancholy in The Noonday Demon: An Anatomy of Depression by Andrew Solomon
Down but never out
Poetic, vital, witty - who'd have thought depression could make such an uplifting read? Andrew Solomon anatomises his breakdowns in The Noonday Demon
I’m not mad. Or am I?
Depression crept up on Andrew Solomon. His life closed in on him: he couldn't eat properly, shower, or talk to friends. Drugs helped, his father helped - but, as his acclaimed new book reveals, there was only one person who could make him feel safe from himself
Get out of that
Psychotherapist Adam Phillips brings out the escape artist in us all in Houdini's Box
Be not idle
Nicholas Lezard finds succour for the soul-sick in Malignant Sadness: The Anatomy of Depression, by Lewis Wolpert
Matter of life and death
Julie Myerson takes issue with Tiger's Eye by Inga Clendinnen, another example of the current fad for sick lit
So a fish does need a bicycle
According to a new US bestseller out here soon, there's only one way to keep Mr Right - just don't tell him when he's wrong