Leader writes of Western Culture’s current failures to define and treat madness. Western nations currently aim to treat the symptoms of psychosis and to bring the patient’s behaviors into line with social norms without understanding or treating the roots of the disease.

Many “symptoms” of psychosis, Leader argues, are actually not symptoms of the underlying disease but adaptations the patient makes to try to adjust their understanding of the world to how the world actually works. The disorders listed in the DSM and the symptoms that define each disorder seem to be defined by the pharmaceutical companies that have a drug to treat each symptom.

I found this book by chance while browsing the shelves of a used bookstore. The great value of used bookstores, beside preserving some very good books, is that they provide such moments of serendipity. Browsing online just isn’t the same as pulling an intriguing tome off the shelf, opening to a random page and having it grab you.

This book describes the history of the US power grid and how technology, regulation, politics and demand shaped it into what it is today. In general, the book is well researched and informative. The author, a cultural anthropologist, gives a much broader view of a subject that others treat as merely a technological or industrial topic. The grid shapes and is shaped by many social, cultural, economic, political and technical forces, and Bakke does a good job of explaining how these forces interact.