At heart, suicide is a subversive act: the assertion of individual will against public authority. How is it, then, that the act of suicide one with defiant political implications has come to be viewed as the last refuge of the self-destructive victim? In Leaving You, Lisa Lieberman explores the puzzle of this reigning perception of suicide. Drawing on diverse sources, from biblical stories to Romantic novels, philosophical theories, and psychiatric diagnoses, along with contemporary memoirs of suicidal depression, she shows how the idea of suicide as an act of protest has pervaded Western...