This book should honestly be a must read for everyone. I knew about the brutal treatment people in the past underwent in mental hospitals and asylums, but this story truly personified the horrors and made concrete realities of it. Not just the pain that patients experienced, but the pain their families felt as well. I'm only rating this 3 stars because it was heartbreaking, and at times incredibly difficult to read and come to terms with the content. This book was challenging for me, but I am better for having read it, and would recommend for anyone who has had their lives impacted by mental illness.

This was a very intriguing, educational, eye-opening, and even emotional read. I liked how we got both diary entries from Dr. Perry Baird and words from his daughter. It added another perspective and dimension to the memoir/book. Both sections of the book were poignant and captivated me. I would definitely recommend you check this out! You will not only learn about the doctor but also about manic depression, mental illness, and mental wards (back in the older days at least).

I found this to be a tough and troubling read. As has been noted in other reviews, the book is divided into two parts: the writings of Dr Perry Baird as well as medical notes and observations from various mental institutions where he he was kept for manic depression, and his daughter's discovery of the manuscript and through her own research, his previously unknown and untold story and the impact his complete removal from her life at an early age had. Desperate to know the father that no one will mention, and 50 years after she was told he was ill and taken away, she spends considerable effort piecing the story together. It's as if she has discovered that she had a broken heart and had not known it before. The descriptions of treatments in the hospitals are harrowing and disturbing, even when you consider what was known about mental illness in the 40' and 50's. But I also am not sure he is a reliable narrator: prone to hallucinations, fabrications, exaggerations and out right lying. His manic and depressive episodes are painful to read and untrustworthy as fact.

I feel very fortunate to have received this brilliant book from Bookbrowse. It provides a very unique voice to mental illness and the many ways that it affects the lives of the patient and those around him or her. Mimi Baird brings us her father's manuscript recounting several stages of his mental illness. In it, Dr. Perry Baird illustrates manic depression from the perspective of both patient and physician. He arouses introspection regarding how the mentally ill have been treated and continue to be treated. I found similarities between this book and Susanna Kaysen’s “Girl, Interrupted.” In that book, the author exposes how the handling of the mentally ill at treatment facilities derives from the stigmas and stereotypes that are perpetuated about them. Mimi Baird’s book similarly accomplishes this. Additionally, she elucidates how Dr. Perry Baird tried to find a treatment for his own disease. She describes experiments that were abated and went largely ignored for many years due to his mental illness. Her father’s brilliant mind shines through despite his mental illness and it is a tragedy that his research was stopped short. Who knows what he could have discovered had he been able to continue his work. The latter part of the book gets into how Mimi’s own life was affected by her dad’s condition as well as her quest to bring his story to the masses. His story is a very important one, and one that I highly recommend to anyone interested in the examination of mental illness.

Great memoir by someone with bipolar disorder, but not that ground-breaking.

I appreciate that Baird included the medical reports because they provide important context for her father's manuscript. I would have preferred more commentary on the unreliability of a manuscript written months after events in many cases. It seems as though readers are being asked to take Dr. Baird at his word, which of course we cannot do. I have no doubt that he was subjected to very inhumane and cruel conditions; however, there were many times throughout his manuscript when I questioned his version of events. I was expecting many more notes at the end such as dates of interviews and details, commentary on the process of obtaining these records, authors of the medical records... In my opinion, Baird asks for too much trust from her readers without proper support or citation.

Truly heartbreaking. A quick read about an incredibly meaningful journey to find answers. I have so much in common with the author and her father, I felt so connected and dragged down with them in the complete and profound lows of this story. Cathartic for more than just the author.

This book didn’t keep me engaged. I enjoyed some of the facts about manic depression, but the story was slow.

Manic depression, now known as bi-polar disorder, is a heart-breaking disease. As with most mental illnesses, it affects not only the person suffering, but also their friends and family members in ways often unthinkable for those unaffected. How much more suffering would be felt if the person with the disease was a doctor - and one who had studied the mental illness he was beginning to suffer from?

Mimi Baird "lost" her father as a very young girl. She was not told about her father's illness or what had happened to him - simply that he was "away". It wasn't until she was an adult that she learned the truth, and was given a unique manuscript written by her father *while he was suffering from his disease*. As she began to put the pieces together, she soon forged a look at the father she barely knew - but had never forgotten.

He Wanted the Moon is an apt title for this story. While it is an interesting look inside a patient suffering from manic depression during a time when such a thing was VERY misunderstood, it feels a bit incomplete. For those not familiar with this disease, or with the "treatments" given to patients during this time, there is a lot left unsaid. I realize Ms. Baird was primarily interested in her father's treatment and history, however more information into standard processes, other famous sufferers, and so on would have given a better basis for a fuller picture of the disease as a whole and her father's place within it.

Having said that - it is a look into the disease that most do not get and that most sufferers are incapable of giving. I can't imagine the despair for an analytical mind like Dr. Baird's as he realized he was slipping further and further into madness. And while his aftermath was covered somewhat quickly, I wonder if he even knew at the end how much of him was lost.

This is more of a memoir of a doctor who suffered from bipolar disease in the 1930s and 1940s. His daughter had the book published and is based on his journal and medical records. There weren't any drugs known to treat mental illness back then and so patients were treated brutally as a way to "cure" them. This man was on the forefront of research to treat mental illness but he wasn't able to finish his studies because his illness was debilitating.