I think if a reader wants to expand her general cultural knowledge, this readable book is an exciting but serious place to explore. But it can't be called a book that one can just read through, unless one is true hardcore reader. This survey is an attic stuffed to bursting. We read anecdotes of madness and alcohol, madness and love, and madness and stress. We read with fascination stories of famous breakdowns concerning King Lear, Joe Louis, Mark Vonnegut, Scott Fitzgerald and Richard Nixon. Here and there are short essays on madness and creative endeavor with the focus on the son of Charles Mingus, Robert Schumann, Scott Joplin, Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, and Marquis de Sade. There's an interesting piece on the confluence of crime and madness with an accent on how the Soviets used mental hospitals to oppress dissidents like Zhores Medvedev. Friedrich expresses a healthy skepticism of R. D. Laing and psychiatry in general and reminds us that the theories of Sigmund Freud had much more influence than we can believe nowadays. He even focuses on narrow groups for their higher than average propensity for craziness, like chess players (Paul Morphy, Bobby Fischer), poets (Ezra Pound), and Harvard alumni. The stories of George III, Timothy Leary, and Eldridge Cleaver are terribly sad.

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