In his best-selling book Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, Eric G. Wilson challenged our culture's blindly insistent pursuit of happiness at all costs. In his harrowing yet ultimately hopeful memoir, The Mercy of Eternity, the author turns an unsparing eye on his own continuing struggle with bipolar depression and finds, within the very illness that causes so much suffering, the resources for hope, forgiveness, and love.

ERIC G. WILSON is the Thomas H. Pritchard Professor of English at Wake Forest University. His previous book, Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy (2008), was a Los Angeles Times and Calgary Herald best seller and was featured on NBC's Today Show, NPR's All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation, the BBC's Today Programme, and CBC's The Current. It was also featured or reviewed in Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and the Globe and Mail, among many others.