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In Mad in America, medical journalist Robert Whitaker reveals an astounding truth: Schizophrenics in the United States currently fare worse than patients in the world's poorest countries, and quite possibly worse than asylum patients did in the early nineteenth century. With a muckraker's passion, Whitaker argues that modern treatments for the severely mentally ill are just old medicine in new bottles, and that we as a society are deeply deluded about their efficacy. Tracing over three centuries of "cures" for madness, Whitaker shows how medical therapies have been used to silence patients and dull their minds. He tells of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century practices of "spinning" the insane, extracting their teeth, ovaries, and intestines, and submerging patients in freezing water. The "cures" in the 1920s and 1930s were no less barbaric as eugenic attitudes toward the mentally ill led to brain-damaging lobotomies and electroshock therapy. Perhaps Whitaker's most damning revelation, however, is his report of how drug companies in the 1980s and 1990s skewed their studies in an effort to prove the effectiveness of their products. Based on exhaustive research culled from old patient medical records, historical accounts, numerous interviews, and hundreds of government documents, Mad in America raises important questions about our obligations to the mad, what it means to be "insane," and what we value most about the human mind.

From one of the most ferociously brilliant young voices in literary non fiction: a debut of extraordinary force that interrogates a particular paradigm of American masculinity, capturing with discomforting intimacy and precision the landscape of the misfit. Kent Russell's essays take us to society's ragged edges, the junctures between savagery and civilization, where solitary, philosophical, troubled men yearn for a more heightened form of existence. We meet a self-immunizer in small-town Wisconsin who has conditioned his body to withstand the bites of the most venomous snakes; NHL enforcers who build their careers on violence and intimidation; a former mogul who has retreated to a crocodile-infested island off the Australian coast; the fans at a three-day music festival ominously called the Gathering; Amish baseball players who push the limits of their cultural restraints; and, perhaps most memorably, Russell's own oddball, inimitable forebears. I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son, at once blistering and deeply personal, records Russell's quest to understand, through his journalistic subjects, his own appetites and urges, his childhood demons and persistent alienation, and, above all, his knotty, volatile, vital relationship with his father.Combining the fierce intellect and humane wit of John Jeremiah Sullivan and David Foster Wallace with a dark, unfettered sensibility all his own, Russell gives us a haunting and unforgettable portrait of America.

Alternate-cover edition can be found here In his second collection, Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated and beloved short-story writers in American literature—a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one’s way through the dark.

1981 short story collection by Raymond Carver

Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy – the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.

The story of a mentally disabled man whose experimental quest for intelligence mirrors that of Algernon, an extraordinary lab mouse. In diary entries, Charlie tells how a brain operation increases his IQ and changes his life. As the experimental procedure takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment seems to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance--until Algernon begins his sudden, unexpected deterioration. Will the same happen to Charlie?

American singer, songwriter and record producer (1941-1967)

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The terrifyingly prophetic novel of a post-literate future.Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books.The classic dystopian novel of a post-literate future, Fahrenheit 451 stands alongside Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World as a prophetic account of Western civilization’s enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity.Bradbury’s powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which, decades on from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock.--back cover

[Penguin Readers Level 4]Winston Smith lives in a society where the government controls people every second of the day. He fights this world with love. But it's dangerous: love for another person can be punished by death - and Big Brother is always watching.Orwell's classic story shows that there is no freedom unless ideas and beliefs can be questioned. This is as true today as when it was written, more than fifty years ago.

The novel is set during World War II, from 1942 to 1944. It mainly follows the life of Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier. Most of the events in the book occur while the fictional 256th Squadron is based on the island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea, west of Italy. The novel looks into the experiences of Yossarian and the other airmen in the camp, who attempt to maintain their sanity while fulfilling their service requirements so that they may return home.

And here it is...the best collection of short stories I've ever read. Where has Carver been all my life? Why did no one slap me over the head with his work fifteen years ago? I mourn that it took me this long to discover him and now I must get my little claws on everything Carver asap.How the heck can a writer capture so much power into super-short stories. I'm talking ten page stories. How?! Each one is a stand alone masterpiece with so much authenticity and sense of reality and yet, they are all small perfect little dreams of sadness. All the characters are mourning themselves, they're all hurting so beautifully.I re-read several of these stories already and will tuck this gem away to re-read forever.Stand outs: “They’re Not your Husband” - Just the imagery alone is so tangible and delightful. I loved this twisted and cruel tale. It felt like a movie, a TV show, a full length novel. I wanted to stay in that diner and watch the dysfunction for hours over a slice of pie.“Nobody Said Anything” - Such melancholy. “Collectors” - Oh strangeness! Is there anything more lonely than a door to door vacuum salesman? No. “Jerry and Molly and Sam” - Trapped trapped trapped. This was a mini Yates story.The writing is haunting and soaked in a sense of foreboding. Heart-breaking. Wonderful.

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