About the Book
Addressing the concept of a personal U-turn--when a person abruptly changes his or her direction in life--Grierson brilliantly describes and elucidates this powerful, mysterious phenomenon, and in doing so illuminates our continual struggles with life choices and identity.
“Read this book for the tales it tells, for the inspiration it imparts, or for the knowledge it so generously gives.”—Lauren Slater, author of "Welcome to My Country
"In this impressively researched and incisive book, Bruce Grierson draws on over three hundred stories of so-called “U-turners,” who have risked their livelihoods to answer a sudden wake-up call. We meet people who change political parties and careers, doctors who quit to become poets, men who become women, people who suddenly become revolutionaries for a cause they didn’t care about the day before. In chapters that address everything from the neuroscience behind epiphanies to the possibility of “forcing” a U-turn, Grierson brilliantly describes and elucidates this powerful, mysterious phenomenon, and in doing so illuminates all of our continual struggles with life choices and identity.