Language has always been used as a measure of social, ideological, and psychological contexts for the exploration of madness. The Madhouse of Language considers the relations between madness and language from the late seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries, focusing on the close analysis of both medical records and texts by mad writers. It presents a highly original account of the linguistic relations between madness and sanity, of the appropriation by sane writers of the forms of English, and of attempts by mad patients to gain access to the expressive potential of language.

A shocking story of medical brutality perfomed in the name of psychiatric medicine.

The award-winning climate scientist Michael E. Mann and the Pulitzer Prize–winning political cartoonist Tom Toles have been on the front lines of the fight against climate denialism for most of their careers. They have witnessed the manipulation of the media by business and political interests and the unconscionable play to partisanship on issues that affect the well-being of billions. The lessons they have learned have been invaluable, inspiring this brilliant, colorful escape hatch from the madhouse of the climate wars. The Madhouse Effect portrays the intellectual pretzels into which denialists must twist logic to explain away the clear evidence that human activity has changed Earth's climate. Toles's cartoons collapse counter-scientific strategies into their biased components, helping readers see how to best strike at these fallacies. Mann's expert skills at science communication aim to restore sanity to a debate that continues to rage against widely acknowledged scientific consensus. The synergy of these two climate science crusaders enlivens the gloom and doom of so many climate-themed books—and may even convert die-hard doubters to the side of sound science.

The dazzling story of a Nigerian family. The house at the end of Freetown Street in Nigeria’s Sabon Gari was once a sanatorium for colonists deranged from the heat and insanity of the place. Now it is home to a family whose unorthodox lives unfold into legend: Sweet Mother, an artist, her husband Shariff, a writer and soldier, and their children André and Max. From the moment his baby brother André is born, Max attaches himself to him, even dreaming the boy’s homicidal dreams. When the wayward André later pulls free from the family to join a death cult, Max must decide how far he will be drawn into his brother’s web. Serene and beautiful, Ladidi joins the family as a foster child, promising to marry the boy at school who can bring her a strawberry, a fruit she has never tasted. Sensuality blooms, along with loss of innocence amid the death of music legend Fela Kuti, massacres, disappearances, abductions and broken promises. While Sweet Mother and Shariff battle their personal demons, Max realises you cannot save your family. But can you ever escape them? In his exhilarating debut, TJ Benson conjures up a kaleidoscope of Nigeria. This is the extraordinary tale of five people bound by blood, each searching for a way through.

The novel opens in a provincial mental health hospital on the morning of the 14th February 2007 and comes to a cataclysmic end several hours later Lacklustre guest speaker ('Love: Self-sacrifice? Or Self-preservation?') Ülkü Birinci fails to impress the Medical Director, whose plans to write the history of the hospital are destined to remain stillborn. Town elder Türkan, retired judge and staunch Kemalist, leaves him gaping at her photographic archive, grasp of new media, research methods and sheer intelligence. As this literary palimpsest unfolds, the reader travels through time and space, to 1875 and back again, between the Caucasus, Ottoman and Republican Turkey, Europe and the USA, through wars, reform, riots, and coups d'état.