Reading Recommendations for a Summer of Awe

This video series is taking a short break while Dr Moffic travels. For now, enjoy the rerun of this video with updated commentary.

This is the third year in a row of posting this video, in part because its recommendations for summer reading remain viable, including the ones for last year, posted July 12, 2023. Rusti sings the intro of an excerpt from "What a Wonderful World" and our book recommendation for this year can help bring a more wonderful world.

This year we are right around the cusp when an important new book is being published, titled, Covert: The Psychology of War and Peace, with psychiatrist Neil Aggarwal being one of the coauthors. It describes how a social psychiatric approach of teaching and establishing trust between leaders of opponents may help bring peace. For an in-depth interview on the book and subject, see my posted interview of Dr Aggarwal on June 6, 2024, “Psychiatrists and Peacemaking: A Cultural Psychiatry Perspective."

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.