Having written the diagnostic manual to bipolar illness, Kay Redfield Jamison turned to poets in Touched by Fire and to herself in An Unquiet Mind, but manic-depression was still the dominant theme in both her lay books. Fire theorized about the mental states of writers from Alfred, Lord Tennyson to Robert Lowell. Mind analyzed Jamison’s own battle against the beast. But despite some celebrations of the creative powers induced by mild mania, the two books draw the same conclusion: There is no art to feeling sad. Jamison reads from An Unquiet Mind at 7 p.m. at Politics & Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. FREE. (202) 364-1919. (Christopher Porter)