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Start giftingGracefully Insane
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreIts 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.
Alex Beam is a columnist for the Boston Globe and a former Moscow correspondent. He is the author of two novels about Russia, Fellow Travelers and The Americans are Coming!, as well as three works of nonfiction: American Crucifixion; Gracefully Insane; and A Great Idea at the Time, the latter two both New York Times Notable Books. He has also written for the International Herald Tribune, the Atlantic, Slate, and Forbes/FYI. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with his wife and three sons.
Matthew Josdal is a voice-over and theater artist originally from a small town in southwest Saskatchewan. Matthew obtained his BFA in drama from the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, where he currently resides. He has narrated audiobooks in genres ranging from historical nonfiction to contemporary fantasy, along with most things in between. In addition to a fifteen-plus year career in acting for both stage and microphone, he recently completed all of his requirements for his honors degree in psychology.