The Great Pretender

The author spends A LOT of time talking about herself and plugging her previous book (which is also about herself). If I cared about that stuff then I would have read that book, but I don't so I didn't. I resent having to wade through all the self promotion in order to learn about the experiment that is supposedly the topic of this book. At 60 pages in, with no mention of the book's topic in sight, I am giving up.

“For every miracle like me, there are a hundred like my mirror image; a thousand rotting away in jails or abandoned on the streets for the sin of being mentally ill; a million told that it's all in their heads. As if our brains aren't inside those heads, as if that warrants dismissal, not further investigation. As if there could be any other response but humility in the face of the devastating enigma that is the brain.”

Ms. Cahalan's special skill is organization, which sounds unimportant until you try to read a disorganized non fiction work and realize that it's probably one of the most important skill a writer can have. It's not enough to be a talented researcher (which she is) or a powerful writer (which she is) – you have to know what goes where, when to talk about the big picture, when to get personal, when to have anecdotes and when to share data. This book flows so beautifully that you come away with an incredible understanding for what she's reporting on, why it matters, what her process was, what her doubts and confidences are – it just makes sense. If you're even mildly interested in the subject matter (and you should be, given how important it is to all our lives) you should give it a read.