Drawing on recent advances in genetics, neuroscience, and psychopharmacology, Kay Redfield Jamison, an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, presents a stunningly detailed and compelling analysis of the effect of manic-depressive illness on the creativity of some of history's most important artists: Byron, Coleridge, van Gogh, Hemingway, Hopkins, Jarrell, Lowell, Roethke, Schumann, Schwartz, Sexton, Shelley, and Woolf. For centuries it has been speculated that the intense, volatile moods of great artists were somehow allied to mental illness, but previous studies were limited to and by intuitive hunches and cultural stereotypes. The phrase “mad genius” illuminated neither what was “mad” nor what was “genius.” Jamison's work draws on her wide knowledge of clinical data about a specific disorder combined with literary and psychological studies of creativity. The result is a powerful alliance between