cover image Rage

Rage

Michael Eigen. Wesleyan University Press, $45 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-8195-6585-3

Blessed Order for Rage Malignant rage, mischievous rage, moral rage. New York University psychology professor Michael Eigen (Ecstasy) offers a taxonomy of anger in his appropriately titled Rage. Eigen looks to the Bible, Sophocles, modern geopolitics and, most of all, case studies from his own practice to examine why wrath, in its many forms, has been such a vital and driving force through human history. Eigen's lyrical, meandering, open-ended style (""Congealed hate and fear, trauma corpses that never let go, a sickly tail one drags through the center of one's being. What have I done with it?"") is not for everyone, but he does manage to identify some of the subtle, complicated ways that rage makes itself felt in people's lives. (Oct.)