Biography

Norman Cousins was born on June 24, 1915 in Union Hill, New Jersey, USA. He was a writer, known for Anatomy of an Illness (1984), Little Clowns of Happytown (1987) and In Search of... (1976). He died on November 30, 1990 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 205-207. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999.

Cousins wrote the 1979 best-seller "Anatomy of An Illness," detailing his struggle with ankylosing spondylitis, a debilitating and painful spinal condition that Cousins was able to overcome through positive thinking and laughter. In that book, which was the basis of a television movie, he also contended that Americans were oversensitive to pain and were "becoming a nation of pill-grabbers and hypochondriacs, escalating the slightest ache into a searing ordeal.".