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.