Pg. 99: Gary J. Bass's "The Blood Telegram"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide by Gary J. Bass.

About the book, from the publisher:

A riveting history—the first full account—of the involvement of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in the 1971 atrocities in Bangladesh that led to war between India and Pakistan, shaped the fate of Asia, and left in their wake a host of major strategic consequences for the world today.

Giving an astonishing inside view of how the White House really works in a crisis, The Blood Telegram is an unprecedented chronicle of a pivotal but little-known chapter of the Cold War. Gary J. Bass shows how Nixon and Kissinger supported Pakistan’s military dictatorship as it brutally quashed the results of a historic free election. The Pakistani army launched a crackdown on what was then East Pakistan (today an independent Bangladesh), killing hundreds of thousands of people and sending ten million refugees fleeing to India—one of the worst humanitarian crises of the twentieth century.

Nixon and Kissinger, unswayed by detailed warnings of genocide from American diplomats witnessing the bloodshed, stood behind Pakistan’s military rulers. Driven not just by Cold War realpolitik but by a bitter personal dislike of India and its leader Indira Gandhi, Nixon and Kissinger actively helped the Pakistani government even as it careened toward a devastating war against India. They silenced American officials who dared to speak up, secretly encouraged China to mass troops on the Indian border, and illegally supplied weapons to the Pakistani military—an overlooked scandal that presages Watergate.

Drawing on previously unheard White House tapes, recently declassified documents, and extensive interviews with White House staffers and Indian military leaders, The Blood Telegram tells this thrilling, shadowy story in full. Bringing us into the drama of a crisis exploding into war, Bass follows reporters, consuls, and guerrilla warriors on the ground—from the desperate refugee camps to the most secretive conversations in the Oval Office.

Bass makes clear how the United States’ embrace of the military dictatorship in Islamabad would mold Asia’s destiny for decades, and confronts for the first time Nixon and Kissinger’s hidden role in a tragedy that was far bloodier than Bosnia. This is a revelatory, compulsively readable work of politics, personalities, military confrontation, and Cold War brinksmanship.

Learn more about The Blood Telegram at the Knopf website.

Writers Read: Gary J. Bass (January 2008).

The Page 99 Test: The Blood Telegram.

--Marshal Zeringue

Free book: "Death of a Nightingale"

Soho Crime and the Campaign for the American Reader are giving away a copy of Death of a Nightingale (Nina Borg #3) by Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis.

HOW TO ENTER: (1) send an email to this address:

(2) In the subject line, type Death of a Nightingale.

(3) Include your name (or alias or whatever you wish to be called if I email you to tell you you've won the book) in the body of the email.

[I will not sell or share your email address; nor will I be in touch with you unless it is to tell you you have won the book.  I promise.]

Contest closes on Monday, November 4th.

Only one entry per person, please.

Winner must have a US mailing address.

Read more about Death of a Nightingale at the Soho Crime website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven of the best haunted house books

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Ashley Brooke Roberts tagged seven of the best haunted house books, including:

The Shining, by Stephen King.

Okay, so the Overlook Hotel isn’t a house per se, but it sure as hell is haunted. We’ve all seen the movie, but have you read the book? Way creepier, and offering way more history on the world’s worst hotel. True story: my best friend’s mom put this book in a Ziploc bag and kept it in the freezer while reading it because it scared her so much.

Read about another book on the list.

The Shining is among Jake Kerridge's top ten Stephen King books, Amanda Yesilbas and Charlie Jane Anders's top ten horror novels that are scarier than most movies, Charlie Higson's top ten horror books, and Monica Ali's best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Tina Connolly reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Tina Connolly, author of Copperhead.

Her entry begins:

Well, I just turned in Ironskin #3 to my editor, and I'm about 2 weeks from my due date for our baby #2 [ed: it's a girl!], so I'm indulging in some comfort reading. I'm currently re-reading all the Anne McCaffreys on my shelf. Just started in on Pern, and I went ahead and picked up the ones written by her son Todd McCaffrey as well, since I'd never read those.

It's fun immersing yourself in a long series. I was actually just thinking about how much scope the worldbuilding in the Pern series gives you to play around with. I recently read a blog post by Daniel Abraham (whose work I really enjoy) about building lots of secrets into the first book of a series, so you have plenty of room to pull them out in later volumes.

Similarly, the first book in the Pern series (Dragonflight, 1968) looks rather like a standard fantasy world at first glance, with humans bonding telepathically to dragons and fighting the dangerous organism Thread. But...[read on]

About Copperhead, from the publisher:

Set in an alternate version of early 1900s England, Copperhead is the sequel to Tina Connolly's stunning historical fantasy debut, Ironskin.

Helen Huntingdon is beautiful—so beautiful she has to wear an iron mask.

Six months ago her sister Jane uncovered a fey plot to take over the city. Too late for Helen, who opted for fey beauty in her face—and now has to cover her face with iron so she won’t be taken over, her personality erased by the bodiless fey.

Not that Helen would mind that some days. Stuck in a marriage with the wealthy and controlling Alistair, she lives at the edges of her life, secretly helping Jane remove the dangerous fey beauty from the wealthy society women who paid for it. But when the chancy procedure turns deadly, Jane goes missing—and is implicated in a murder.

Meanwhile, Alistair’s influential clique Copperhead—whose emblem is the poisonous copperhead hydra—is out to restore humans to their “rightful” place, even to the point of destroying the dwarvven who have always been allies.

Helen is determined to find her missing sister, as well as continue the good fight against the fey. But when that pits her against her own husband—and when she meets an enigmatic young revolutionary—she’s pushed to discover how far she’ll bend society’s rules to do what’s right. It may be more than her beauty at stake. It may be her honor...and her heart.

Learn more about the book and author at Tina Connolly's website, blog, and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: Copperhead.

Writers Read: Tina Connolly.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top counter-factual novels

D.J. Taylor is a novelist, critic, and biographer whose Orwell won the Whitbread Prize for Biography. His most recent books are Kept; Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation; Ask Alice; Derby Day, which was nominated for the Booker Prize and was selected as a Washington Post Best Book of the Year; and the newest novel, The Windsor Faction.

For the Guardian he named his top ten counter-factual novels, including:

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon (2007)

Another version of mid-century American history in which Roosevelt neither loses to Lindbergh nor signs a peace treaty but recommends that a Jewish state should be established not in Israel but Alaska ("Alyeska"). Cue an inspired criminal caper, written in the style of 1940s noir, in which detective Meyer Landsman pursues a murder enquiry back to what looks like a Jewish version of the mafia.

Read about another novel on the list.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union is one of Molly Driscoll's top six alternate-history novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kristan Higgins's "The Perfect Match," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Perfect Match by Kristan Higgins.

The entry begins:

I’m not going to pretend here—Tom Hardy was the inspiration for the hero of The Perfect Match to the point where I now own a Tom Hardy calendar. I even named my hero Tom, which I thought was a solid blue-collar name. Tom Barlow is from Manchester, England, the only son of a butcher, and put himself through school on a boxing scholarship. I have a thing for the movie Warrior, as well as 124 pictures of young Mr. Hardy on my computer. Tom Hardy has such appeal as a romantic lead—when I saw This Means War, I was a little stunned that the heroine goes with the other guy (not that there’s anything wrong with Chris Pine, but please! He’s no Tom Hardy.)

What I love about Tom Hardy is...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Kristan Higgins's website, blog, and Facebook page.

My Book, The Movie: Somebody to Love.

My Book, The Movie: The Perfect Match.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Scott C. Johnson's "The Wolf and the Watchman"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: The Wolf and the Watchman: A Father, a Son, and the CIA by Scott C. Johnson.

About the book, from the publisher:

What happens when a father asks his son to lie for the greater good?

Growing up, Scott C. Johnson always suspected that his father was different. Only as a teenager did he discover the truth: his father was a spy, one of the CIA’s most trusted officers. At first the secret was thrilling. But over time Scott began to have doubts. How could a man so rigorously trained to deceive and manipulate simply turn off those skills at home? His father had been living a double life for so long that his lies were hard to separate from the truth.

When Scott embarked on a career as a foreign correspondent, he found himself returning to many of the troubled countries of his youth. In the dusty streets of Pakistan and Afghanistan, amid the cold urbanity of Yugoslavia, and down the mysterious alleys of Mexico City, he came face to face with his father’s murky past—and his own complicity in it. Scott learned that his chosen profession was not so different from his father’s: they both worked to gain people’s trust and to uncover their secrets. The only difference was what they did with that information.

In the aftermath of 9/11, father and son found themselves on assignment in Afghanistan and the Middle East, one as a CIA contractor, the other as a reporter for Newsweek. Suddenly, an unsettled Scott was forced to keep his father’s secret all over again. As their professional lives collided, Scott and his father inched toward a personal reckoning, struggling to overcome a lifetime of suspicion and deception.

The Wolf and the Watchman is a provocative, meditative account of truth and duplicity, of manipulation and loyalty. It is also a moving, intensely personal portrait of a bond between father and son that endured in the shadow of one of the world’s most secretive and unforgiving institutions.

Learn more about the book and author at The Wolf and the Watchman website.

The Page 99 Test: The Wolf and the Watchman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Free book: "Rwanda Before the Genocide"

Oxford University Press and the Campaign for the American Reader are giving away a copy of Rwanda Before the Genocide: Catholic Politics and Ethnic Discourse in the Late Colonial Era by J.J. Carney.

HOW TO ENTER: (1) send an email to this address:

(2) In the subject line, type Rwanda.

(3) Include your name (or alias or whatever you wish to be called if I email you to tell you you've won the book) in the body of the email.

[I will not sell or share your email address; nor will I be in touch with you unless it is to tell you you have won the book.  I promise.]

Contest closes on Monday, November 11th.

Only one entry per person, please.

Winner must have a US mailing address.

J.J. Carney is Assistant Professor of Theology at Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska. In addition to Rwandan Catholic history, Carney's research interests include the theology of reconciliation, political theology, mission history, and African ecclesiology. He has previously taught at the Catholic University of America and the University of Arkansas where he also served as a Catholic campus minister.

Read more about Rwanda Before the Genocide at the Oxford University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Three recommended novels featuring lawyers

Scott Turow's new novel is Identical.

Noah Charney asked Turow to recommend three novels featuring lawyers for readers at The Daily Beast. One title to get the nod:

A Married Man by Piers Paul Read. This novel is currently out of print, but I can’t fail to mention it. It tells the story a British barrister, a criminal lawyer, in mid-life crisis. I read the book while I was in law school, and its combination of clever plotting and earnest reflection served as one of the models for what I was trying to accomplish when I wrote Presumed Innocent.

Read about another recommended novel.

See: Scott Turow's five best legal novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Gina Linko reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Gina Linko, author of Indigo.

Her entry begins:

Doll Bones by Holly Black

So spooky. This book totally creeped me out. The mystery at the core of this story is pitch-perfect. So well written. The reader plays this guessing game: Is it real? Is it not real? It's spectacular! There were a few moments in this book -- referencing the "blond one" -- when I literally got goose bumps. Just read it. Then you'll know what I'm talking about. This is seriously a near-perfect...[read on]

About Indigo, from the publisher:

A gift? A curse? A moment that changes everything....

Caught in an unexpected spring squall, Corrine's first instinct is to protect her little sister Sophie after a nasty fall. But when Corrine reaches out to comfort her sister, the exact opposite occurs. Her touch—charged with an otherworldly force and bursting with blinding indigo color—surges violently from Corrine to her sister. In an instant, Sophie is dead. From that moment on, Corrine convinces herself that everyone would be better off if she simply withdrew from life.

When her family abruptly moves to New Orleans, Corrine's withdrawal is made all the easier. No friends. No connections. No chance of hurting anyone. But strange things continue to happen around her in this haunting, mystical city. And she realizes that her power cannot be ignored, especially when Rennick, a talented local artist with a bad-boy past, suggests another possibility: Corrine might have the touch. An ability to heal those around her. But knowing what happened to her sister, can Corrine trust her gift?

Learn more about the book and author at Gina Linko's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: Indigo.

Writers Read: Gina Linko.

--Marshal Zeringue

Free book: "Want Not"

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and the Campaign for the American Reader are giving away a copy of Want Not by Jonathan Miles.

HOW TO ENTER: (1) send an email to this address:

(2) In the subject line, type Want Not.

(3) Include your name (or alias or whatever you wish to be called if I email you to tell you you've won the book) in the body of the email.

[I will not sell or share your email address; nor will I be in touch with you unless it is to tell you you have won the book.  I promise.]

Contest closes on Monday, November 18th.

Only one entry per person, please.

Winner must have a US mailing address.

Read more about Want Not at Jonathan Miles's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top mystery books

Thomas H. Cook is a thriller and mystery writer of over 20 books. His latest novel is Sandrine's Case.

He tagged his top ten mystery books for Publishers Weekly. One title on the list:

Sneaky People by Thomas Berger

This is arguably one of the funniest crime novels ever written. It is set in the 1930s, and its main character is Buddy Sandifer, a used car dealer who wants one very simple thing: his wife dead. The reason is no less simple. He yearns to live the rest of his days with Laverne, a woman who on occasion dimly realizes that sleeping with men for money adds up to prostitution. Buddy’s efforts to plot his wife’s murder creates one of the most hilarious tales of misadventure you will ever read.

Read about another novel on Cook's list.

Learn about Cook's five top books on the writing life.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Jane Tesh's "Now You See It"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Now You See It: A Grace Street Mystery by Jane Tesh.

About the book, from the publisher:

Private investigator David Randall, still struggling with guilt over his daughter Lindsey’s death, can’t bring himself to look at the DVD of her dance recitals. Fortunately, he’s distracted by two cases: socialite Sandy Olaf’s missing diamond bracelet, and a missing box magicians Taft and Lucas Finch say belonged to Houdini.

When Taft is found dead in a trunk at the Magic Club, Randall’s suspects include the owner, Rahnee Nevis, who was in love with Taft; punk magician, WizBoy, who wants to run the club; the bartender, Jilly, who was also in love with Taft; and Jolly Bob, a washed up magician.

Meanwhile, Randall’s friend Camden is concerned with losing his voice, his girlfriend Kary insists on being a magician’s assistant, and Cam’s girlfriend, Ellin, has to deal with overbearing Sheila Kirk, wife of a potential sponsor who insists on hosting the PSN’s programs.

When Randall discovers Taft had a phone call the night he died, he assembles all the magicians to Lucas’s house for a special magic show. Pretending that Taft had forwarded his message to Lucas, he forces Jilly to admit she’s the killer. Angry at Taft for his attention to Rahnee , she lured him to the club saying she’d found the box, doctored his drink with aspirin, and asked to see the escape trick. When a disoriented Taft got into the trunk, Jilly locked him in.

His cases solved, Randall finally decides he wants to see Lindsey’s video and is comforted seeing her dance once more.

Learn more about the book and author at Jane Tesh's website.

The Page 69 Test: Mixed Signals (Grace Street Mystery #2).

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Jane Tesh and Winkie.

The Page 69 Test: Now You See It.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Debora L. Spar's "Wonder Women"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection by Debora L. Spar.

About the book, from the publisher:

Fifty years after the Equal Pay Act, why are women still living in a man’s world?

Debora L. Spar never thought of herself as a feminist. Raised after the tumult of the 1960s, she presumed the gender war was over. As one of the youngest female professors to be tenured at Harvard Business School and a mother of three, she swore to young women that they could have it all. “We thought we could just glide into the new era of equality, with babies, board seats, and husbands in tow,” she writes. “We were wrong.”

Now she is the president of Barnard College, arguably the most important all-women’s college in the United States. And in Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection—a fresh, wise, original book— she asks why, a half century after the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, do women still feel stuck.

In this groundbreaking and compulsively readable book, Spar explores how American women’s lives have—and have not—changed over the past fifty years. Armed with reams of new research, she details how women struggled for power and instead got stuck in an endless quest for perfection. The challenges confronting women are more complex than ever, and they are challenges that come inherently and inevitably from being female. Spar is acutely aware that it’s time to change course.

Both deeply personal and statistically rich, Wonder Women is Spar’s story and the story of our culture. It is cultural history at its best, and a road map for the future.

Learn more about Wonder Women at the publisher's website.

Debora L. Spar is the president of Barnard College, a women’s undergraduate college affiliated with Columbia University.

The Page 99 Test: Wonder Women.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books of criticism

John Freeman is an award-winning writer and book critic. The former editor of Granta and onetime president of the National Book Critics Circle, he has written about books for more than two hundred publications worldwide, including The New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, La Repubblica, and La Vanguardia. His first book, The Tyranny of E-mail, was published in 2009. His poetry has been published in The New Yorker, ZYZZYVA, and The Paris Review. His new book is How to Read a Novelist.

For The Daily Beast, Freeman named his favorite books of criticism. One title on the list:

Create Dangerously by Edwidge Danticat.

The best critics excavate in order to rescue. In this moving collection of essays, Edwidge Danticat reminds how the emigrant writer must first do that to their own voice, for reasons she enumerates in pieces that alternate between meditations on Albert Camus, Haiti’s blood-soaked slave uprising, and her own family’s shattered history. Danticat’s voice is warm, yet steely, as if every word of this fiercely written book was dug out of the dirt by her own hands.

Read about another book on Freeman's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Paul Conroy reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Paul Conroy, author of Under the Wire: Marie Colvin's Final Assignment.

His entry begins:

After the injuries I received in Syria I have been unable to get out and take any meaningful photographs. This has posed me with a dilemma, what to do next with my life?

Conflict reporting may be a tough one to continue with, at least on the very frontline. I never again want anyone to have to stop and have to help me, to put their lives on the line for me and be killed or injured in doing so.

My agents and publishers are convinced I can write, so I have turned to books for inspiration. One book in particular combines all of the traits I look for in a good read, P.J. O'Rourke's, Holidays in Hell. It offers an incredibly open, honest and hilarious insight into the world of journalism which, despite offending some of the more aloof members of the journalistic community, is a world I...[read on]

About Under the Wire, from the publisher:

Zero Dark Thirty meets 127 Hours—a riveting war journal from photographer Paul Conroy, who accompanied Marie Colvin (called by her peers “the greatest war correspondent of her generation”) during her ill-fated final assignment in Syria.

Marie Colvin was an internationally recognized American foreign war correspondent who was killed in a rocket attack in 2012 while reporting on the suffering of civilians inside Syria. She was renowned for her iconic flair and her fearlessness: wearing the pearls that were a gift from Yasser Arafat and her black eye-patch, she reported from places so dangerous no other hard-core correspondent would dare to go. Paul Conroy, who had forged a close bond with Colvin as they put their lives on the line time and time again to report from the world’s conflict zones, was with her when she died. Under the Wire is Paul’s gripping, visceral, and moving account of their friendship and the final year he spent alongside her. When Marie and Paul were smuggled into Syria by rebel forces, they found themselves trapped in one of the most hellish neighborhoods on earth. Fierce barrages of heavy artillery fire rained down on the buildings surrounding them, killing and maiming hundreds of civilians. Marie was killed by a rocket which also blew hole in Paul’s thigh big enough to put his hand through. Bleeding profusely, short of food and water, and in excruciating pain, Paul then endured five days of intense bombardment before being evacuated in a daring escape in which he rode a motorbike through a tunnel, crawled through enemy terrain, and finally scaled a 12-foot-high wall. Astonishingly vivid, heart-stoppingly dramatic and shot through with dark humor, in Under the Wire Paul Conroy shows what it means to a be a war reporter in the 21st century. His is a story of two brave people drawn together by a shared compulsion to bear witness.

Learn more about Under the Wire, and follow Paul Conroy on Twitter.

My Book, The Movie: Under the Wire.

The Page 99 Test: Under the Wire.

Writers Read: Paul Conroy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Free book: "The Baby Chase"

St. Martin's Press and the Campaign for the American Reader are giving away a copy of The Baby Chase: How Surrogacy Is Transforming the American Family by Leslie Morgan Steiner.

HOW TO ENTER: (1) send an email to this address:

(2) In the subject line, type The Baby Chase.

(3) Include your name (or alias or whatever you wish to be called if I email you to tell you you've won the book) in the body of the email.

[I will not sell or share your email address; nor will I be in touch with you unless it is to tell you you have won the book.  I promise.]

Contest closes on Monday, November 11th.

Only one entry per person, please.

Winner must have a US mailing address.

Read more about The Baby Chase at Leslie Morgan Steiner's website and Facebook page.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen of the best books for toddlers

Whitney Collins is the author of The Hamster Won't Die: A Treasury of Feral Humor and the creator and editor of two humor sites -- errant parent and The Yellow Ham.

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog she tagged fifteen of the best books for the youngest bookworms, including:

And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, by Dr. Seuss

This is my favorite Dr. Seuss book because it’s not a tongue twister, nor does it force rhyme, yet it still comes through with reliable Seuss wackiness and unforgettable images.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tina Connolly's "Copperhead," the movie

The current feature at My Book, The Movie: Copperhead by Tina Connolly.

The entry begins:

I always find this a challenging question – I think because I spent so much time in the theatre myself that my first instinct is always: well, I'd like go hold some auditions ... I bet there'd be some good unknowns out there ... also it takes so long to get a movie rolling into production that surely anyone I pick would have aged out by the time we're ready to cast!

Still, here are some random picks for Copperhead:

Helen – Carey Mulligan. I love Mulligan's work, and she brings such complexity to her roles that I think she would be great with Helen, who tries to pass herself off as superficial, but is actually warm-hearted, stubborn, and capable of much change over the course of the book.

Jane – Keira Knightley. I liked Mulligan and Knightley together in...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Tina Connolly's website, blog, and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: Copperhead.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: E. Fuller Torrey's "American Psychosis"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: American Psychosis: How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System by E. Fuller Torrey.

About the book, from the publisher:

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered an historic speech on mental illness and retardation. He described sweeping new programs to replace "the shabby treatment of the many millions of the mentally disabled in custodial institutions" with treatment in community mental health centers. This movement, later referred to as "deinstitutionalization," continues to impact mental health care. Though he never publicly acknowledged it, the program was a tribute to Kennedy's sister Rosemary, who was born mildly retarded and developed a schizophrenia-like illness. Terrified she'd become pregnant, Joseph Kennedy arranged for his daughter to receive a lobotomy, which was a disaster and left her severely retarded.

Fifty years after Kennedy's speech, E. Fuller Torrey's book provides an inside perspective on the birth of the federal mental health program. On staff at the National Institute of Mental Health when the program was being developed and implemented, Torrey draws on his own first-hand account of the creation and launch of the program, extensive research, one-on-one interviews with people involved, and recently unearthed audiotapes of interviews with major figures involved in the legislation. As such, this book provides historical material previously unavailable to the public. Torrey examines the Kennedys' involvement in the policy, the role of major players, the responsibility of the state versus the federal government in caring for the mentally ill, the political maneuverings required to pass the legislation, and how closing institutions resulted not in better care - as was the aim - but in underfunded programs, neglect, and higher rates of community violence. Many now wonder why public mental illness services are so ineffective. At least one-third of the homeless are seriously mentally ill, jails and prisons are grossly overcrowded, largely because the seriously mentally ill constitute 20 percent of prisoners, and public facilities are overrun by untreated individuals. As Torrey argues, it is imperative to understand how we got here in order to move forward towards providing better care for the most vulnerable.

Learn more about American Psychosis at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: American Psychosis.

--Marshal Zeringue