In Leaving You, Lisa Lieberman explores the puzzle of our reigning perception of suicide. Drawing on diverse sources, from biblical stories to Romantic novels, from philosophical theories to psychiatric diagnoses, along with contemporary memoirs of suicidal depression, she finds that the idea of suicide as an act of protest has pervaded Western attitudes toward self-destruction - yet our contemporary way of thinking attempts to deny suicide's disruptive potential by depriving the act of its defiance.<BR>Our reluctance to recognize the right to die, to concede this right even to the terminally ill, Ms. Lieberman suggests, betrays our uneasiness with the power implied in the act of self-destruction. She aims to restore autonomy to the so-called victims by showing how suicide came to function as a vehicle for constructing one's identity.