WHAT YOU NEED NOW - CONTENT UPDATED THROUGH THE DAY -

March 8, 2005
 
BOOK REVIEW: 'The Hypomanic Edge' Explains Link Between Mania, Success in U.S.
 
Reviewed by David M. Kinchen
Huntington News Network Book Critic
 
Hinton (HNN) — You don't have to be crazy to be rich and famous in America, but it helps to be a little manic, says John D. Gartner in his "The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America." (Simon & Schuster, 368 pages, illustrated, $26).
 
Hypomania, a genetic based, mild form of mania, is the leading indicator of financial and/or intellectual success in America, as well as in other nations with an immigrant population base — Canada, Australia, Israel — because hypomanics are hard-wired to succeed. That's the thesis of Gartner, a Ph.D. and clinical professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Since the book is essentially an exercise in psycho-biography, a controversial field, I expect it will generate a firestorm of controversy among the professoriat.
 
When writers like Fawn Brodie, a biographer of Thomas Jefferson and American diplomat (he was the first ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1933) William C. Bullitt, who collaborated with Sigmund Freud in a controversial book about Woodrow Wilson, entered the world of psycho-biography, they were tarred and feathered by the shrinks.
 
For the general reader, however, "The Hypomanic Edge" will explain a lot about what makes Americans so American. This book is squarely aimed at the general reader and is notably lacking in psychobabble jargon. Gartner acknowledges his debt to German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) who contributed the phrase "the Protestant Ethic" to our language. At least in the writings I've encountered, Weber is also very readable, especially for a German academic.
 
In "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" (1904). Weber argued that Calvinistic Protestants — think John Calvin, John Winthrop, Roger Williams and John Wesley — made successful entrepreneurs because of the Protestant Ethic that drove them. Unlike Catholics, most Protestants viewed the accumulation of property a good thing, even though under the doctrine of predestination — central to Calvinism -you had no choice of going to heaven or hell. Pietists (a branch of Lutheranism) and Roman Catholics, on the other hand, ended up working for Protestants or the government because they valued security over being their own bosses. Think of all the Catholic cops and firefighters and bureaucrats. Weber quotes a proverb: "Either eat well or sleep well...the Protestant prefers to eat well, the Catholic to sleep undisturbed."
 
Gartner, who includes Winthrop and religious freedom pioneer and founder of Rhode Island Roger Williams in the mini-biographies in his book, advances Weber's theory a step farther by adding Catholics like Christopher Columbus and Jews like Louis B. Mayer and his son-in-law David O. Selznick ("Gone With the Wind," "Duel in the Son," "Spellbound") to the mix that created the unique country that became the United States of America.
 
Gartner examines at great length Alexander Hamilton, perhaps the most hypomanic of all the Founding Fathers. Ironically, he died in an 1804 duel with another hypomanic, Aaron Burr. Hamilton had all the signs of a true hypomanic: Interviewing five of Hamilton's biographers and reading them clinical descriptions of hypomania, Gartner constructed a profile of Hamilton that reveals the immigrant from the West Indies to be:

• Unusually active at work or other pursuits
• Quick thinking; thoughts race through his head and he jumps from idea to idea
• Setting goals that seem grandiose, yet he appears to be supremely confident of success
• Full of confidence that can make him charismatic, persuasive, attractive
• Wanting to act on an idea immediately; he is a risk taker in general and is often a financial risk taker
• Unusually sexually active, and can be risky in his sexual behavior
• Working on little sleep, rising early in the morning full of pep and working until late at night

Using a standard five-point agreement/disagreement scale, Gartner found the five biographers ranked Hamilton 4.6 (5 being strongly agree). I found the profile equally descriptive of Bill Clinton. In fact, most successful politicians — Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, even our current president — are hypomanic to a strong degree.
 
Gartner applies his methodology to another immigrant, Andrew Carnegie, who came to Pittsburgh from Scotland with his family in the middle of the 19th Century about as poverty stricken as any character from Dickens. His Scots work ethic — it's amazing how many inventors and engineers and economists have a Scottish background — combined with innate ability and hard work made him America's steel king. He sold his steel business for $480 million in 1901 to J.P.Morgan, who combined Carnegie's companies with others to create U.S. Steel.
 
Carnegie, who was a miserable employer — his mills had among the worst working conditions in the nation and he treated his workers harshly — became one of the nation's great philanthropists. The library in my hometown of Rochelle, Ill. was a Carnegie library, as were more than 2,800 in 11 countries and every state but Rhode Island. His name is part of a great university in Pittsburgh and he worked mightily but unsuccessfully to stop the madness in Europe that led to the Great War (later renamed World War I).
 
Gartner's examination of the Mayers and the Selznicks show how hypomania enabled immigrant Jews to create the motion picture industry. They were barred from just about every other industry — automobiles, steel, commercial banking — but movie barons like Mayer, Carl Laemmle (creator of Universal), William Fox, Harry Cohn and many others excelled in an industry that was scorned by WASPs — entertainment. This concept is explored fully in Neal Gabler's "An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood" (Anchor, 1988). All three of the radio and TV networks — CBS, NBC and ABC — were founded by Jews.
 
The last hypomanic examined by Gartner, Craig Venter, decoder of the human genome, comes from a Mormon background, which added to his success. Mormons share many qualities with Jews, including pogroms in places like Nauvoo, Illinois in the 1840s, where their founder Joseph Smith was murdered, which made them emigrate to Utah later that decade. Mormons value education and clean living and are high achievers — like many Jews and Calvinist Protestants and today — immigrants from India and China. Additionally, many Mormons who immigrated to this country came from predominantly Protestant areas like the Scandinavian nations.
 
Immigrant bashers will get no support from Gartner: He is a cheerleader for immigration, which he views as a major ingredient to the hypomanic success of the U.S. and other immigrant nations. Throughout the nation, highly educated immigrants have created jobs and new industries: Silicon Valley comes to mind, where fully one-third of the entrepreneurs are from the Indian subcontinent. Our movie and television industry would be much poorer today if all the Canadians disappeared — including Kiefer Sutherland, the star of one of my favorite TV shows, "24."
 
After reading "The Hypomanic Edge," I sat down and started listing others who fit the profile developed by Gartner. Two automobile magnates came to mind: Henry J. Kaiser and Preston Tucker, contemporaries in the post-World War II era and innovators in automobile design and engineering. Anyone reading the book will be able to construct similar lists of domestic and foreign hypomanics.
 
Publisher's Web Site: www.simonsays.com
Author's Web Site: www.hypomanicedge.com
 
HNN is not responsible for the content of external internet sites
 
More Book Reviews by David M. Kinchen
— 10/28/04 BOOK REVIEWS: Bill Kurtis on the Death Penalty; Ms. Moffett Becomes a Teacher
— 11/15/04 BOOK REVIEW: Roth Envisions a Frightening 'What If?' in 'The Plot Against America'
— 11/24/04 BOOK REVIEWS: Bush, Blair and Iraq; A Shrink at Nuremberg; Updike's Sexy Geek; Potomac Fever Smites an Academic
— 12/15/04 BOOK REVIEWS: 'Past Imperfect' Covers Complexities of History, Plagiarism Issues; 'His Excellency' Reveals George Washington's Accomplishments
— 12/29/04 BOOK REVIEWS: ‘de Kooning’ Chronicles Rise of American Art Supremacy; ‘Adams vs. Jefferson’ Shows That Controversial Presidential Elections are Nothing New
— 01/17/05 BOOK REVIEW: Max Hastings on Germany's 'Armageddon' as Allies from West, East Conquer Third Reich
— 01/24/05 BOOK REVIEW: ‘Images of America: Huntington’ Displays Glorious Architecture of West Virginia’s First Planned City
— 01/29/05 BOOK REVIEW: ‘Auschwitz’ Personalizes Horror That Should Never Be Forgotten
— 01/31/05 BOOK REVIEWS: ‘Election 2004’ Shows How Bush Won; ‘Santa Cruz’ is Captivating Picture History of California’s Laid-Back Resort town
— 02/06/05 BOOK REVIEW: 'French Women Don't Get Fat' is a Delightful Way to Read Yourself Thin; Monsieurs: There's No Reason Why It Won't Work for You!
— 02/14/05 BOOK REVIEW: ‘Irish Milwaukee,’ ‘Italian Milwaukee’ Capture Flavor of One of America’s Best Cities — And Best Kept Secrets
— 02/17/05BOOK REVIEW: ‘Freedom Rising,’ Vividly Re-Creates Life in Nation's Capital During the Civil War
— 02/21/05 BOOK REVIEW: ‘ Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom?,’Economist Says There's No Danger of Housing Melt-Down; Says Media Exaggerates 'Bubble'
— 03/02/05 BOOK REVIEW: 'Freedom Rising' Vividly Re-Creates Life in Nation's Capital During the Civil War

David M. Kinchen is the Editor of HuntingtonNews.Net, repsponses and article submissions can be made to .
 
As a precaution against “spam” and viruses this e-mail address has been presented with a JavaScript. If you do not see this e-mail address, please check your security settings or upgrade your Web browser, links are available on the HNN Links page. Alternately by changing the appropriate portions you may manually enter the following address:

stories[at]huntingtonnews[dot]net