Plus, receive recommendations and exclusive offers on all of your favorite books and authors from Simon & Schuster.
Table of Contents
About The Book
Reminiscent of William Styron’s Darkness Visible but with an appealing vein of humor, a magnificently written memoir of riding the depression roller coaster, choosing electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), and finding the path to happiness—with fascinating side-journeys into the nature of identity and memory.
Growing up in a hyper-educated, artistic, eccentric family, Ted Scheinman, the son of a medical doctor and an English professor, spent much of his precocious childhood as a writer and performer—and his greatest performance was as someone who was happy. He recognized his depression early and recorded its effects in a series of tragicomic journals, always hoping that the ritual of doing so would palliate if not cure.
While the clouds occasionally parted, particularly during Ted’s years of intellectual questing at Hotchkiss and Yale—and, fleetingly, through his emergence as a successful journalist—his gloom kept returning, seemingly more debilitating each time. Eventually, a series of emotional plunges deposited Ted, at age thirty-five, in a psych ward in Washington, DC. There, he began an intensive course of electroconvulsive therapy—considered by most a treatment of last resort. The controversial procedure saved his life, but it also exacted a price: he was now missing important pieces of his memory.
By turns deeply gripping, startlingly perceptive, understatedly hilarious, and heartbreakingly poignant, particularly in Ted’s depiction of his romantic relationships, Jolt asks: How do our families shape who we are, for good and ill? How much of our character is ingrained versus sculpted by circumstances? How can we adapt when our memory fails? Perhaps most critically: What are we willing to sacrifice to have a chance at life?
Ultimately, this exceptionally engrossing memoir brings hope to anyone who has ever tried desperately to regain their footing and rejoin the world.
Growing up in a hyper-educated, artistic, eccentric family, Ted Scheinman, the son of a medical doctor and an English professor, spent much of his precocious childhood as a writer and performer—and his greatest performance was as someone who was happy. He recognized his depression early and recorded its effects in a series of tragicomic journals, always hoping that the ritual of doing so would palliate if not cure.
While the clouds occasionally parted, particularly during Ted’s years of intellectual questing at Hotchkiss and Yale—and, fleetingly, through his emergence as a successful journalist—his gloom kept returning, seemingly more debilitating each time. Eventually, a series of emotional plunges deposited Ted, at age thirty-five, in a psych ward in Washington, DC. There, he began an intensive course of electroconvulsive therapy—considered by most a treatment of last resort. The controversial procedure saved his life, but it also exacted a price: he was now missing important pieces of his memory.
By turns deeply gripping, startlingly perceptive, understatedly hilarious, and heartbreakingly poignant, particularly in Ted’s depiction of his romantic relationships, Jolt asks: How do our families shape who we are, for good and ill? How much of our character is ingrained versus sculpted by circumstances? How can we adapt when our memory fails? Perhaps most critically: What are we willing to sacrifice to have a chance at life?
Ultimately, this exceptionally engrossing memoir brings hope to anyone who has ever tried desperately to regain their footing and rejoin the world.
About The Author
Photograph by Marvin Joseph
Ted Scheinman is a senior editor at Smithsonian magazine and contributing editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books. His 2018 debut, Camp Austen: My Life as an Accidental Jane Austen Superfan, garnered enthusiastic praise on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond. His essays and reporting have appeared in such publications as The New York Times, GQ, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and Slate. He and his wife make their home in Washington, DC.
Product Details
- Publisher: Scribner (November 10, 2026)
- Length: 304 pages
- ISBN13: 9781668075616
Browse Related Books
Raves and Reviews
“BEAUTIFUL, RAW, AND DEEPLY FELT, Jolt is a riveting account of depression, memory, and the last resort of ECT, handled here with uncommon elegance. Ted Scheinman has given us a gift with this slyly gorgeous meditation on the sacrifices necessary to being well—one that embraces the mystery of what makes us human.”
—Susannah Cahalan, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire
“I WAS DEEPLY MOVED BY THIS BRILLIANT BOOK. Jolt isn’t just a rich and fulfilling report on the brain and the ways it can sometimes betray us, but a beautiful and heart-wrenching portrait of family, parentage, and what it is to crawl out from beneath the weight of expectation and attempt to remake yourself.”
—Hanif Abdurraqib, National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Go Ahead in the Rain, and A Little Devil in America
“THE MOST ENGROSSING MEMOIR I HAVE READ IN AGES. I was rooting for Scheinman because he's such excellent charming company on the page, even as he hurtles into the depths of depression.”
—Richard Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Dispatches from Pluto and The Deepest South of All
“BRILLIANT. Like some cockeyed modern version of Dante's Virgil, Ted Scheinman takes the reader on a vivid journey through his descent into a depressive inferno and his ascent back out. Only Scheinman's a lot funnier—imagine Virgil with the self-lacerating wit of Carrie Fisher or Augusten Burroughs.”
—Scott Stossel, National Editor of The Atlantic and bestselling author of My Age of Anxiety
“REVEALS DEEP UNIVERSAL TRUTHS. This book has enriched me. To read it is to become a more thoughtful friend, parent, and person in the world. Even in moments of complex struggle, the quiet wisdom coursing through the story will inspire and change you.”
—Jeff Hobbs, New York Times bestselling author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace
“WISE, FUNNY, AND HARROWING, this is the extraordinary telling of an extraordinary life, of a boy who lost his self, and a man who found his soul. Not since William Styron's Darkness Visible has an American author so honestly plumbed the truths of his own mental illness.”
—Jeff MacGregor, writer for the New York Times, Esquire, Sports Illustrated, and the New Yorker
“YOU ARE IN FOR A GREAT TREAT. How rare to find a writer as gifted as Ted Scheinman who is willing to take readers into the deepest and darkest corners of his life and emerge with such hope. This gorgeous, generous book is a celebration of the human spirit.”
—Meg Kissinger, award-winning author of While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence
“A BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN CHRONICLE. In this generous and deeply compelling memoir, Scheinman probes his family history with compassion and insight—without a whiff of victimhood. His most impressive artistic feat is that he has written a book about devastating depression that is warm, hopeful, and threaded with humor.”
—Christie Tate, New York Times bestselling author of Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life
“WRY AND SEARING. What do you do decade after decade when your brain refuses to let you live the beautiful life you've struggled to build? If you're Ted Scheinman, you turn to electroconvulsive therapy. In Jolt he presents a devastating chronicle of his long-term illness and hard-won recovery while dealing honestly with the toll treatment takes on his life and memory.”
—Andrea Pitzer, author of Icebound and The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov
“PROFOUNDLY MOVING. An expertly narrated coming-of-age story, wrenchingly poignant, but also keenly comedic in showing how absurdity and sorrow live side by side.”
—Vince Granata, author of Everything Is Fine
Resources and Downloads
High Resolution Images
-
Book Cover Image (jpg): Jolt
eBook 9781668075616
-
Author Photo (jpg): Ted Scheinman Photograph by Marvin Joseph(0.1 MB)
Any use of an author photo must include its respective photo credit
