"Földényi's extraordinary Melancholy ... part history of the term melancholy and part analysis of the melancholic disposition, explores many centuries to explore melancholy's ambiguities.

Why, this book asks, has the incidence of depression been on such an increase in the last 50 years, if our basic biology hasn't changed as rapidly?

A disarmingly personal meditation by one of our most distinguished art historians, this book explains why to write about art is to share in a kind of intertwined pleasure and loss that is the very essence of melancholy.

In Against Happiness, the scholar Eric G. Wilson argues that melancholia is necessary to any thriving culture, that it is the muse of great literature, painting, music, and innovation—and that it is the force underlying original insights.

This is interdisciplinary writing at its best-part analytic philosophy, and part history of ideas.