Tracy Thompson
I am a journalist, book author and editor. My most recent book, The New Mind of the South (Simon & Schuster), is a look at what my native region is becoming in the 21st century, and why it continues to be so misunderstood by Southerners and non-Southerners alike.
Before I started doing what I do now, I was a newspaper reporter for 15 years—-eight years at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and seven years at the Washington Post. I've also written about mental illness, both my own and other people's, discovering in the process that one of mankind's most enduring afflictions is still shrouded in stigma, even today. If you ask me, that's just crazy! Those books, The Beast and The Ghost in the House, are what writers call "well reviewed," meaning the critics liked them but they never came close to the best-seller list. But they're still in print, and you can order them from my favorite independent bookstore, Politics and Prose, at https://www.politics-prose.com/.
“The brain is the only organ that tries to make sense of its pain. It is as if the bone were trying to understand the break, as if the blood vessel could comprehend its rupture. But this is also its greatest impediment to understanding. The mind clings fiercely to any alternative to chaos, even if that alternative is self-destruction.”
“The unexamined life is not worth living, but the unlived life is not worth examining.”