A history of psychiatry : from the era of the asylum to the age of prozac

"A splendid book...engaging and excedingly well--written"--Journal of the American Medical Association. "To compress 200 years of psychiatric theory and practice into a compelling and coherent narrative is a fine achievement...What strikes the reader [most] are Shorter's storytelling skills, his ability to conjure up the personalities of the psychiatrists who shaped the discipline and the conditions under which they and their patients lived."--Ray Monk, Night and Day (the UK Sunday Mail magazine.

Now in paper! Edward Shorter covers the history of psychiatry from the late 18th century to the present.

Supporting his often provocative positions with the latest historical and scientific research, he sounds the death knell for "talking" therapies and heralds a bright new age of medical--based psychiatric treatments.

EDWARD SHORTER (Toronto, Canada) is the Hannah Professor in the History of Medicine at the University of Toronto and the author of ten books, including the widely acclaimed The Making of the Modern Family.