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NonfictionSocial Science

Caste

Review by Alice Cary

In The Warmth of Other Suns, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson eloquently traced the lives of the 6 million Black Americans who fled the Jim Crow South during the Great Migration. Never once in that 640-page book did she mention the word racism. “I realized that the term was insufficient,” she explains. “Caste was the more accurate term.”

Her latest book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, is a much anticipated follow-up and couldn’t be timelier. In it, she examines the “race-based caste pyramid in the United States,” comparing this sociological construction to two other notable caste systems: those of India and Nazi Germany. “As we go about our daily lives,” Wilkerson writes, “caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.”

Wilkerson’s comparisons are profound and revelatory. Chapters describe what she has identified as “the eight pillars of caste,” the methods used to maintain this hierarchy, such as heritability, dehumanization and stigma, and control of marriage and mating. In addition to such insights, including how immigrants fit into the caste system, what makes this book so memorable is Wilkerson’s extraordinary narrative gift. Highly readable, Caste is filled with a multitude of stories, many of which are tragically familiar, such as those of Trayvon Martin and Freddie Gray. The story of Sergeant Isaac Woodard Jr. is particularly shattering. Returning home on a Greyhound bus after serving in World War II, Woodard asked the driver to allow him to step off the bus to relieve himself, but the driver refused. When Woodard protested, the driver called the police and had him arrested. The police chief, in turn, blinded the returning soldier with his billy club.

Stories like these are painfully informative, making the past come alive in ways that do not beg but scream for justice. That said, Wilkerson is never didactic. She lets history speak for itself, turning the events of the past into necessary fuel for our current national dialogue.

Dismantling the caste system is possible. Wilkerson points out that Germany did it after World War II. But in the meantime, “caste is a disease, and none of us is immune.” If you read only one book this year, make it Caste, Wilkerson’s outstanding analysis of the grievances that plague our society.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Love audiobooks? Check out Caste and other nonfiction audiobook picks.

In The Warmth of Other Suns, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson eloquently traced the lives of the 6 million Black Americans who fled the Jim Crow South during the Great Migration. Never once in that 640-page book did she mention the word racism. “I realized…

NonfictionSocial ScienceBiography

After the Last Border

Review by Kelly Blewett

Meet Hasna and Mu Naw. Both live in Austin, Texas. Both are refugees with incredible stories, set against the shifting backdrop of policy and politics in the United States.

Mu Naw’s family came from the hill tribes of Myanmar. Young and determined, Mu Naw and husband Saw Ku travel from the verdant hills of Thailand to the suburbs of Austin, where the overwhelming cacophony of English combined with social isolation and financial hardship nearly tear them apart. Readers are with Mu Naw as she goes to English class, finds out she’s unexpectedly pregnant, is betrayed by sponsors who are supposed to protect her, forms close ties with other refugees and becomes a resilient leader. In After the Last Border, Jessica Goudeau illustrates that though stories of refugees like Mu Naw are everywhere, they can be hard to access and understand, even for those who have known the refugees for years.

Hasna’s story is less triumphant. A Syrian refugee who moves to Austin with the long-term goal of reuniting her family (Hasna has four grown children and, to date, four grandchildren), her transition is full of bitter surprises. After a lifetime of serving in the home, Hasna now works as a hotel cleaner. Her family struggles to make ends meet. Her husband, Jebreel, was disabled by a missile in Syria. Before applying to become an international refugee, Hasna lived in Jordan for a few years, and much of her story takes place there. From a rooftop garden, above an apartment she shares with two of her children, Hasna can see bombs firing in her home city across the border in Syria. Her children are now spread across the globe, refugees in three different countries. She hasn’t recovered.

These are only two stories among thousands. As Goudeau’s careful history demonstrates, attitudes toward refugees are shifting, and the current rhetoric surrounding refugee resettlement uneasily echoes the rhetoric of 80 years past. To keep history from repeating itself, it is time to understand the roots of refugee resettlement in the U.S. and to look fully into the faces of those who are being affected.

Meet Hasna and Mu Naw. Both live in Austin, Texas. Both are refugees with incredible stories, set against the shifting backdrop of policy and politics in the United States.

Mu Naw’s family came from the hill tribes of Myanmar. Young and determined, Mu Naw and husband…

NonfictionSocial ScienceMedicine

The Sensitives

Review by Becky Libourel Diamond

Environmental hazards such as chemicals, additives, pollution and allergens abound in today’s world. We are bombarded by them on a daily basis, yet for most of us, our bodies are able to filter out these foreign substances. But for some people, who call themselves “sensitives”, these bodily processes break down over time, causing people to develop an oversensitivity known as environmental illness, or EI.

Oliver Broudy (The Saint) investigates this condition in a multilayered way, weaving history, science, nature, health and psychology into a narrative with a good old-fashioned road trip as its backbone. Broudy chronicles his journey with a sensitive named James to find Brian, also a sensitive, who has gone missing and just happens to be a leader within the EI community. The two men drive to Snowflake, Arizona, a kind of “sensitives headquarters.” Here they hope to get more intel on Brian, and Broudy hopes to interview Liz, the community’s main “contact.”

Along the way Broudy provides informative commentary about EI, a disorder that can be intensely painful, irritating and maddening, leading those who experience it to develop a range of illnesses and idiosyncrasies. He provides a myriad of theories, expert opinions and patient feedback, highlighting the fluidity of EI’s impetus and evolution.

As the two men thread their way through the western U.S., Broudy describes in vivid detail the sparsely populated outposts that seem frozen in time and the desolate landscapes with rock formations rising up out of the earth as “wrinkled battlements surrounded by the dross of their own crumble the way an autumn tree is ringed by leaves.” Learning about EI is fascinating and even infuriating, but the excursion and bonding experience between the author and his travel companion is even more intriguing. Over miles of open road, Broudy and James learn more about each other and themselves, and the reader is educated about a chemical threat that is “woven into the fabric of everyday life.” The Sensitives: The Rise of Environmental Illness and the Search for America’s Last Pure Place is one road trip you’ll want to take.

Environmental hazards such as chemicals, additives, pollution and allergens abound in today’s world. We are bombarded by them on a daily basis, yet for most of us, our bodies are able to filter out these foreign substances. But for some people, who call themselves “sensitives”, these…

NonfictionSocial ScienceMemoir

Is Rape a Crime?

Review by Jessica Wakeman

In 1984, two men broke into Michelle Bowdler’s Boston apartment. They tied her up, blindfolded her, held a knife to her throat and raped her. After they left and once she freed herself, Bowdler immediately called the police. Cops took fingerprints and evidence from her home. She submitted to a rape kit at the hospital; nurses combed the crime scene that was her body for anything that might identify her rapists. Bowdler did everything that she thought she was supposed to do as a victim. 

Is Rape a Crime? A Memoir, an Investigation, and a Manifesto is about everything that happened—or more accurately, did not happen—afterward. The trauma began with the police officers who dismissively took a report in her living room. In the ensuing weeks, years and decades, the Boston Police Department’s mishandling became even worse. 

An article in the Boston Globe in 2007 prompted Bowdler to revisit her rape case and press the BPD for answers. At the time, there were many news stories about a backlog of untested rape kits. (It’s estimated that as many as 400,000 evidence kits have never been tested in the United States.) Bowdler argues that the word “backlog” implies a queue. The real problem is that law enforcement has not shown the will to pursue these crimes. 

Is Rape a Crime? blends Bowdler’s own narrative with detailed research about how law enforcement—from crime labs to individual cops—fail rape victims. Bowdler is candid about how trauma from the break-in, rapes and police inaction still affects her entire life. She is now a wife and mother of two, but piecing her life together following the rapes has been a slow process. Understandably, a lot of conversations about rape victims focus on positives, like their strength to survive. Bowdler’s voice in the conversation will make sure you know that her survival is hard won. 

In 1984, two men broke into Michelle Bowdler’s Boston apartment. They tied her up, blindfolded her, held a knife to her throat and raped her. After they left and once she freed herself, Bowdler immediately called the police. Cops took fingerprints and evidence from her…

NonfictionSocial ScienceMiddle Eastern History

Sex and Lies

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

When bestselling author Leila Slimani published her debut novel, Adéle, in 2014, she spent two weeks on a book tour around Morocco. After her events at bookshops, universities and libraries, numerous women were hungry to discuss their own personal and political struggles to express their sexuality in a country that represses women’s sexual natures. Slimani collects many of these testimonies, woven together with her own reflections on Morocco’s social attitudes toward sex, in Sex and Lies: True Stories of Women’s Intimate Lives in the Arab World.

Soraya, an attractive woman, perhaps in her 40s, locates Slimani in the hotel bar one evening after an event and, reticently at first, opens up to Slimani about her mother’s marital counsel: “Don’t forget to stay a virgin.” Soraya shares that she never experienced sexual pleasure in her marriage but that, after her divorce, she wants to discover pleasure and freedom. Slimani uses Soraya’s story as an illustration of the many ways women in Morocco face humiliation—humiliations that men never face. They must be good girls, and if they lose their virginity, they are “spoiled.”

Malika is a 40-year-old doctor who’s single and has never been married. Although she feels freer than many women who lack her income and social status, she still must live a life of subterfuge when she wants to sleep with her partner, checking into French hotels where no one will ask them for an ID. As Malika puts it, “Hypocrisy is growing here, and conservatism, too.” Slimani reflects on Malika’s story by pointing out that the more freedom women gain in Moroccan society, the more they take up public space, which leaves men feeling unmoored.

Provocative and disturbing, fervent and moving, Sex and Lies offers a glimpse into a world often hidden from view, allowing Moroccan women to express in their own words their desires and hopes for a sexual revolution in their society.

When bestselling author Leila Slimani published her debut novel, Adéle, in 2014, she spent two weeks on a book tour around Morocco. After her events at bookshops, universities and libraries, numerous women were hungry to discuss their own personal and political struggles to express their…

NonfictionSocial ScienceGraphic Novels & Comics

The Gay Agenda

Review by Sam Worley

Elements of the current crisis­­ will ring familiar to folks of a certain age: the mysterious infection, the incompetent government response, the pernicious effects on the vulnerable, the marginalized, the isolated. The HIV/AIDS epidemic ravaged gay communities in the U.S. starting in the 1980s; only unrelenting pressure from queer activists would make the Reagan administration take notice. The first known report of AIDS was recorded in Los Angeles in 1981—just a dozen years after the 1969 uprising at New York’s Stonewall Inn, the days-long melee between queer and trans people and their police antagonists that marked a turning point in the modern LGBTQ rights movement.

In 2016 that site became a national monument. What an eventful half-century it’s been! These milestones and others are the subject of The Gay Agenda: A Modern Queer History and Handbook. Authors Ashley Molesso and Chess Needham, or Ash + Chess, as they’re known, are prolific illustrators and the proprietors of a stationery company in Richmond, Virginia. This colorful little volume starts around 1900 and offers a brisk romp through recent queer history, with a heavy dose of the arts and popular culture. Think Alison Bechdel, Paris Is Burning and—yep—“RuPaul’s Drag Race.” The authors take care, too, to restore some less well-known figures to their rightful places in the movement, such as Kathy Kozachenko, a lesbian elected to the city council of Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1974, three years before Harvey Milk joined the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

If you’re a parent, this could be something to share with your queer teen to help them understand the history they’re inheriting—or with any teen to help them be a more informed ally. But as the subtitle mentions, the last few dozen pages of The Gay Agenda form a “handbook,” offered “with the purpose of navigating your queerness or understanding someone elses’s”—so if you’re a queer kid, maybe this is a book you give your parents if they have questions about nonbinary pronouns, pansexuality or the concept of “chosen family.” Something for all; this history is America’s.

Elements of the current crisis­­ will ring familiar to folks of a certain age: the mysterious infection, the incompetent government response, the pernicious effects on the vulnerable, the marginalized, the isolated. The HIV/AIDS epidemic ravaged gay communities in the U.S. starting in the 1980s; only…

NonfictionSocial ScienceHistory

Who Ate the First Oyster?

Review by Becky Libourel Diamond

There have been so many “firsts” throughout human history that it would be impossible to calculate them all. But what if you took a few very important ones and deconstructed their evolution—how, when, where and why they happened, their outcome and their effect on humankind?

That’s exactly what Cody Cassidy (co-author of And Then You’re Dead) does in his intriguing new book, Who Ate the First Oyster? The Extraordinary People Behind the Greatest Firsts in History. Delving deep into our primordial past, Cassidy profiles “seventeen ancient individuals who lived before or without writing” whom he deems responsible for humankind’s greatest “firsts.” These range from “Who Invented Inventions?” and “Who Discovered Fire?” to “Who Discovered Soap?” and “Who First Rode the Horse?”

Using these individuals as examples, Cassidy describes in detail what it was like to live in premodern times, along with contemporary touchstones for how these firsts have shaped who we are today. He gathers expert data to offer opinions from a variety of disciplines, including archaeology, anthropology and engineering, providing a well-rounded vision of each subject. Some results are rather surprising, such as the scholarly speculation that geniuses were just as common throughout ancient history (perhaps even more so), and the finding that head surgery was performed over 7,000 years ago with a stone tool (not a sterilized scalpel). He also discusses the things that universally define us as “human,” such as body decoration and the fact that the wheel and axle were independently invented by parents in both Europe and the Americas to make a toy.

Ultimately, Cassidy presents the impact of new technology on our current knowledge base. “With modern tools,” he writes, “scholars can now engage in more educated speculation about the greatest people, moments, and firsts of ancient history than ever before.” Who Ate the First Oyster? is a fascinating dive into the history of us all.

There have been so many “firsts” throughout human history that it would be impossible to calculate them all. But what if you took a few very important ones and deconstructed their evolution—how, when, where and why they happened, their outcome and their effect on humankind?

…
NonfictionWomen's HistorySocial Science

In Our Prime

Review by Priscilla Kipp

When feminist, scholar, media critic and author Susan J. Douglas (The Mommy Myth, Where the Girls Are) writes, “So here we are, on our puppet strings,” she is addressing “women of a certain age”—and she means it not as a wail of surrender but as a call to arms. Her book In Our Prime: How Older Women Are Reinventing the Road Ahead will inflame the hearts of both those who participated in the feminist movement of the 1970s and those who cut their teeth on #MeToo.

This rallying cry hearkens back to a long history of gender and age discrimination, from the patriarchal laws of colonial America that denied women their property rights, to the suffragists’ long fight for the right to vote, to the “coiling together of ageism and misogyny [that] served as a powerful weapon against Hillary Clinton in 2016.” From such “turnstile moments” have come history’s inspiring activists: FDR’s Labor Secretary Frances Perkins; Dolores Huerta of the National Farm Workers Association; co-founder of Ms. magazine Gloria Steinem; the Gray Panthers’ founder Maggie Kuhn; and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Now is the time, Douglas urges her aging contemporaries, to pass the feminist-activist torch to the next generation.

Thanks to the constant barrage of print, television and social media, ageism (or anti-aging) seems to be everywhere. It’s rampant across advertising campaigns, thriving in the largely unregulated cosmetics industry and inherent in Big Pharma marketing, where “age itself is a condition that needs treatment.” Without vigilance and action, Douglas warns, prejudicial attitudes can become government policies.

She pays special attention to current perspectives on the fate of Social Security. With statistical evidence always in hand, Douglas points out that women tend to outlive men while earning less over their lifetimes and so are more vulnerable to changes in this long-standing retirement benefit. The personal can become political: Keep an eye on your future, she advises her younger counterparts, and share your awareness with others. The collective consciousness-raising of the 1970s needs a comeback.

Inspiration can also come from celebrity “visibility revolts,” as when ageist stereotypes are demolished on screen in shows like “Grace and Frankie,” which follows in the footsteps of “The Golden Girls.” With humor and aplomb, Douglas makes a convincing case for how to end the war on older women and reinvent what aging can mean.

When feminist, scholar, media critic and author Susan J. Douglas (The Mommy Myth, Where the Girls Are) writes, “So here we are, on our puppet strings,” she is addressing “women of a certain age”—and she means it not as a wail of surrender but as…
NonfictionTechnologySocial Science

Lurking

Review by Sarah Carter

The dial tone. The faxlike robot sounds. The promise of instant connection with someone across the country (or with your crush from math class). This is the way the internet began for most of us. 

For O.G. internet users, the potential for human connection, personal learning and technological growth once stretched beyond the horizon. Enter: trolls, the corporate sale of private information, a false sense of connection and myriad other challenges. Joanne McNeil’s Lurking: How a Person Became a User is a thoughtful exploration of the development of technology, online identity and the essential elements of humanness that make it all possible.

True to McNeil’s style, Lurking poses more questions than answers, giving readers a wide berth to wrestle with their own opinions. The book offers seven different lenses through which readers can examine online identity, and it’s structured around seven corresponding chapters, each with a one-word title as the starting point for discussion. 

For example, the first chapter, “Search,” is a meditation on both internet search engines and human longing. It equates search engine history with pennies in a fountain, the result of “wishes people tossed in the well.” This grouping allows McNeil to transcend literal application and makes space for lines such as, “Real people search, but real desire cannot be identified.” Lurking strikes an impressive balance of insider tech-talk and universal human connection, though true techies will have an obvious leg up with the nuances of internet-specific examples. 

The author proposes concrete safeguards for building a better internet, such as online community members acting as “librarians” to protect and archive their content, along with other practical suggestions. Without these practices, McNeil maintains, “the internet remains imperfect, a hell that is fun, ruled by idiots and thieves, providing users with slingshots for self-expression but no shield from the bile that rebounds.”

The dial tone. The faxlike robot sounds. The promise of instant connection with someone across the country (or with your crush from math class). This is the way the internet began for most of us. 

For O.G. internet users, the potential for human connection, personal…

NonfictionSocial Science

The Hot Hand

Review by Becky Libourel Diamond

Is there really such a thing as a “hot streak”—a prolonged span of consistent success? In his debut book, The Hot Hand: The Mystery and Science of Streaks, Wall Street Journal sports reporter Ben Cohen takes a deep dive into this fascinating, often misunderstood phenomenon. 

Cleverly crafted through stories, examples, personal experiences, research studies, expert opinion and theories, The Hot Hand relies heavily on Cohen’s sports reporting expertise, with entertaining illustrations taken from both the basketball court and baseball diamond. These include a high school basketball team that adopted a winning strategy of shooting the ball only when very close to the basket or very far away, the success of NBA star shooter Stephen Curry and the interplay between an unlikely MLB starting pitcher and batter on a sticky Texas evening. 

But this book isn’t just about sports. “[A hot streak] happens to different people in different professions for entirely different reasons,” says Cohen, providing illustrations from the farming industry, computer gaming, business, Shakespeare, the art world and even how the music streaming service Spotify got the kinks out of its shuffle algorithm. He also delves into the difference between the gambler’s fallacy (how we perceive outcomes that are beyond our control) and the hot-hand fallacy (how we perceive outcomes we feel we can control).

Along with real-life examples are pages of authoritative commentary about the psychological and evolutionary ramifications of hot streaks, including a fascinating interjection from a professor who relates hot streaks to cognitive adaptation, suggesting our ancestors relied on the hot hand to forage. Cohen also covers comparative advantage—betting against the hot hand as an effective business strategy.

The Hot Hand is an interesting and thought-provoking book on a topic that isn’t often discussed but that impacts many different interests, activities and industries. Cohen sums it up best: “The hot hand is not a random occurrence. It’s the collision of talent, circumstance, and even a little bit of luck.”

Is there really such a thing as a “hot streak”—a prolonged span of consistent success? In his debut book, The Hot Hand: The Mystery and Science of Streaks, Wall Street Journal sports reporter Ben Cohen takes a deep dive into this fascinating, often misunderstood phenomenon. 

…
NonfictionWomen's HistorySocial Science

Hood Feminism

Review by Carly Nations

Although there are more women CEOs today than there were at the beginning of the 1970s, complaints of workplace harassment and threats toward women who speak out have remained largely unchanged. But author and activist Mikki Kendall explains that the feminist movement has an even larger failure to contend with: the way that it has left behind women of color as white women grab more power. Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That a Movement Forgot critiques the dangers of this exclusionary brand of feminism and exhorts those who support changing it for the better.

Throughout the book, Kendall points toward political arenas that historically haven’t been tied to feminism, like food insecurity, gun violence and access to education—issues that largely affect communities of color. Kendall not only details the ways in which ignoring these issues has turned feminism into white feminism but also explains how these missteps have resulted in the failure of feminism as a whole. She convincingly demonstrates how this exclusionary behavior, intended to protect the interests of white women who “cling to the agency and selfhood they feel they have fought so hard to achieve,” in fact results in an outcome that threatens those interests: a strengthening of the patriarchy that actively works against the goal of equality.

Hood Feminism addresses a world that has abandoned marginalized people in favor of creating more opportunity for those who are already in power. For Kendall, the work of feminism is not the achievement of female success but rather the achievement of a larger ideal: genuine equality. If that is the goal, the work of feminism is far from over. 

In fact, with rising income inequality, surging gentrification and shrinking social services, the work of feminism has only just begun.

Although there are more women CEOs today than there were at the beginning of the 1970s, complaints of workplace harassment and threats toward women who speak out have remained largely unchanged. But author and activist Mikki Kendall explains that the feminist movement has an even…

NonfictionSocial ScienceHistory

Seduction

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

We’ve all been seduced before. We’ve allowed politicians to lure us away from our reason to follow our passions for an issue or a candidate; we’ve let television commercials sing a siren song to us about our absolute need for a product—a car, a bottle of beer, a chicken sandwich—that will send us into ecstasy once we possess it. We’re surrounded by seduction narratives, and Clement Knox’s Seduction: A History from the Enlightenment to the Present provides an alluring and breathtaking history of enticement in the modern age.

A painstakingly close reader of literary texts, Knox teases out various seduction narratives in novels from Samuel Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa—the original modern seduction narratives—to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying and Neil Strauss’ The Game. Enthralled by these and other texts and cultural artefacts, Knox draws the contours of two forms of seduction narratives that have evolved and now coexist in our culture. He calls the classic seduction narrative the “Villainous” kind, because the seducer uses guile or deception to overcome the resistance of their target. Such narratives play on the psychological vulnerability of the target so that the seducer can lead the target away from what the target really prefers or wants. The other narrative focuses on the power of reason and an individual’s ability to act in their own interest in the pursuit of sexual pleasure.

These seduction narratives are captivating, and most of us are characters in one or the other in our own lives. Knox’s fascinating book illustrates the magnetism of these narratives as they draw us into their orbits and as we use them to offer explanations of individual and social behavior.

We’ve all been seduced before. We’ve allowed politicians to lure us away from our reason to follow our passions for an issue or a candidate; we’ve let television commercials sing a siren song to us about our absolute need for a product—a car, a bottle…

NonfictionSocial Science

The Great Pretender

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

What if you entered a psychiatric hospital under false pretenses? What if the symptoms you presented—a voice that said the words thud, empty and hollow—were false? You’ve seen how easy it is to be diagnosed with a mental illness. From inside, you’ll be able to observe how medical staff interacts with patients. Once you convince the hospital to release you, you’ll share your findings with the professor who arranged the study.

But even then, what if it wasn’t all as it seemed?

Susannah Cahalan, the bestselling author of Brain on Fire, was enchanted by the work of psychologist and Stanford University professor David Rosenhan, who created just such an experiment. Cahalan could relate to the pseudo-patients in his study. As she recounts in her first book, Cahalan was misdiagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a psychiatric illness, before doctors eventually identified that she was suffering from autoimmune encephalitis, an illness with a known physical cause. Such diseases are called “the great pretenders.”

In the people who participated in Rosenhan’s study, Cahalan found another collection of pretenders and a window into psychiatric treatment. A psychologist introduced her to “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” Rosenhan’s account of the pseudo-patient study, which became widely known after its January 1973 publication in the journal Science. (Half of all intro-to-psychology textbooks referenced it by 1976.) In her growing fascination, she studied how Rosenhan’s work affected modern psychiatry, including hospitals that were shut down as a result of the study and revisions that were made to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

But the deeper she dug, the more questions Cahalan had. The pseudo-patients were difficult to identify, even with access to the professor’s notes. In some cases, details didn’t match, and Cahalan questioned the study’s veracity.

The Great Pretender is an account of Cahalan’s own research. In addition to Rosenhan’s study, she weaves in glimpses of other similar experiments, such as Nellie Bly’s well-documented experience as a journalist going undercover in a psychiatric hospital. The book is a detailed examination of psychiatry in the decades since the publication of Rosenhan’s groundbreaking, if elusive, study.

What if you entered a psychiatric hospital under false pretenses? What if the symptoms you presented—a voice that said the words thud, empty and hollow—were false? You’ve seen how easy it is to be diagnosed with a mental illness. From inside, you’ll be able to observe how medical staff…

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