Mary Pilon

presents

The Kevin Show:
An Olympic Athlete's Battle with Mental Illness

in conversation with LOUISA THOMAS

This event includes a book signing

Date

Mar
20
Tuesday
March 20, 2018
7:00 PM ET

Location

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Harvard Book Store welcomes award-winning journalist MARY PILON—author of The Monopolists—for a discussion of her latest book, The Kevin Show: An Olympic Athlete's Battle with Mental Illness. She will be joined in conversation by journalist, historian, and New Yorker contributor LOUISA THOMAS.

About The Kevin Show

Meet Kevin Hall: brother, son, husband, father, and Olympic and America's Cup sailor. Kevin has an Ivy League degree, a winning smile, and throughout his adult life, he has been engaged in an ongoing battle with a person that doesn't exist to anyone but him: the Director.

Kevin suffers from what doctors are beginning to call the "Truman Show" delusion, a form of psychosis named for the 1998 movie, where the main character is trapped as the star of a reality TV show. When the Director commands Kevin to do things, the results can lead to handcuffs, hospitalization, or both. Once he nearly drove a car into Boston Harbor. His girlfriend, now wife, was in the passenger seat.

In the tradition of Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind, journalist Mary Pilon's The Kevin Show reveals the many-sided struggle by Kevin, his family, and the medical profession to understand and treat a psychiatric disorder whose euphoric highs and creative ties to pop culture have become inextricable from Kevin's experience of himself. Interweaving his perspective, journals, and sketches with police reports, medical records, and interviews with those who were present at key moments in his life, The Kevin Show is a bracing, suspenseful, and eye-opening view of the role that mental health plays in a seemingly ordinary life.

Praise

"Draws attention to the toll of mental illness on individuals and their families." —Publishers Weekly

"As [The Kevin Show] journeys through Hall's illness, it also forces readers to consider the 'sanity' of their own relationship to a media-saturated world . . . Grippingly provocative reading." —Kirkus Reviews

"Spellbinding. Brilliant. A true-life psychological thriller that captures the ongoing drama of a major mental illness as it unfolds while also recognizing its complexity and majesty." —Edward M. Hallowell, M.D.

Louisa Thomas
Louisa Thomas

Louisa Thomas

Louisa Thomas is the author of Conscience: Two Soldiers, Two Pacifists, One Family—a Test of Will and Faith in World War I. She is a contributor to the New Yorker's website, a former writer and editor for Grantland, and a former fellow at the New America Foundation. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Vogue, The Paris Review, and other places.

Mary Pilon
Mary Pilon

Mary Pilon

Mary Pilon is the author of the New York Times best seller The Monopolists, the acclaimed history of the board game Monopoly. A regular contributor to The New YorkerEsquire, Fast Company, MSNBC, Vice, and Politico, Pilon has also worked as a staff reporter at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and was a producer for NBC Sports at the 2016 Olympics. She lives in Brooklyn. Visit her website at marypilon.com and follow her on Twitter at @marypilon.

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 2 minutes

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