Overview

Its landscaped ground, chosen by Frederick Law Olmsted and dotted with Tudor mansions, could belong to a New England prep school. There are no fences, no guards, no locked gates. But McLean Hospital is a mental institution--one of the most famous, most elite, and once most luxurious in America. In its golden age, McLean provided as genteel an environment for the treatment of mental illness as one could imagine. But the golden age is over, and a downsized, downscale McLean--despite its affiliation with Harvard University--is struggling to stay afloat. Gracefully Insane, by Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam, is a fascinating and emotional biography of McLean Hospital from its founding in 1817 through today. It is filled with stories about patients and doctors: the Ralph Waldo Emerson prot'g' whose brilliance disappeared along with his madness; Anne Sexton's poetry seminar, and many more. The story of McLean is also the story of the hopes and failures of psychology and psychotherapy; of the evolution of attitudes about mental illness, of approaches to treatment, and of the economic pressures that are making McLean--and other institutions like it--relics of a bygone age.

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Alex Beam is an American writer and journalist. He is also a columnist for The Boston Globe. He has worked at Newsweek and BusinessWeek, where his tenure included Boston and Moscow bureau chief, before joining the Boston Globe. Matthew Josdal is a voice-over and theater artist who has narrated titles in a wide range of genres, including historical nonfiction and contemporary fantasy. Originally from a small town in southwest Saskatchewan, he obtained his BFA in drama from the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, where he currently resides.

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