The Madness Pill
One Doctor's Quest to Understand Schizophrenia
$60.76
- Hardcover
240 pages
- Release Date
28 April 2026
Summary
In the 1950s, the field of psychiatry had nothing to show for itself. While polio was being cured, antibiotics were being discovered, and cancer research was developing, the mental health world had no wins. Asylums were full and nobody had figured out how to fix insanity—specifically schizophrenia, the severest mental illness. Scientists became convinced that if they could engineer a pill to create madness, then they could cure it.
Centered around Solomon Snyder, the psychiatrist who …
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781250337962 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 1250337968 |
| Author: | Justin Garson |
| Publisher: | St Martin's Press |
| Imprint: | St Martin's Press |
| Format: | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages: | 240 |
| Release Date: | 28 April 2026 |
| Weight: | 330g |
| Dimensions: | 22mm x 143mm x 217mm |
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Critics Review
”[An] engaging scientific biography… The Madness Pill is a celebration of scientific genius and a salute to the wild complexity of the brain. It is also a powerful reminder of the ordeal of serious mental illness and the ever-pressing need to find better drugs to treat it.“–Dr. Sally Satel, Wall Street Journal
“A riveting, sometimes unnerving read. It takes us far into the lived history and effects of hallucinogens, amphetamines, and a range of other street drugs, and assesses their foundational importance to psychiatric research at the time.”–Christopher Lane, Psychology Today
”… echoing Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks… Thoroughly readable science that rests on solid archival discoveries.“–Library Journal, starred review
“An enlightening biography of a titan of neuroscience and a fascinating guide to how mental illness takes shape in the brain.”–Robert Kolker, author of the #1 NYT bestseller Hidden Valley Road
“With style and insight, Justin Garson has spun a riveting tale of the man whose unruly experiments revolutionized psychiatry. This was a thrilling read from the first to the last word.”–Audrey Clare Farley, author of Girls and Their Monsters: The Genain Quadruplets and the Making of Madness in America
“A fun, fast-paced, fascinating account of one of the most influential figures in the rise of biological psychiatry. Garson’s book will leave readers reflecting on what it means to suffer, go mad, and be human.”
–Laura Delano, author of Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance
“A timely, gripping, and deeply informed narrative about the search to understand and treat psychosis, the most unsettling of psychiatric conditions. It’s a problem on many minds, as mayors and governors across the country struggle to shape meaningful mental health policies. Driven by his own father’s battle with paranoid schizophrenia, Garson offers us invaluable illumination.”–Daniel Bergner, author of The Mind and the Moon: My Brother’s Story, the Science of Our Brains, and the Search For Our Psyches
“A page-turning biography of a complex giant in the field of biological psychiatry but it is also so much more. The legacies of the fascinating and fateful experiments told in this book still shape psychiatry today.”
–Anne Harrington, author of Mind Fixers: Psychiatry’s Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness
Justin Garson
Justin Garson, Ph.D. is a philosopher and historian of science at the City University of New York. He has authored numerous scholarly books and articles on biology, mind, and madness, including Madness: A Philosophical Exploration. He resides in Connecticut with his wife and children.
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