month of summer." Noll was introduced to both the scholarly study and techniques of shamanism in the fall of 1980 by the anthropologist Michael Harner, then a professor at the New School for Social Research in New York City. "Noll has trained with me firsthand in the classic shamanic methods," wrote Harner. Dementia praecox and schizophrenia scholarship Noll's most recent book, American Madness: The Rise and Fall of Dementia Praecox, was published by Harvard University Press in October 2011. A brief interview with Noll appears on the Harvard University Press Blog (30 January 2012). In April 2012 it was announced that American Madness: The Rise and Fall of Dementia Praecox was the winner of the 2012 Cheiron Book Prize from Cheiron, International Society for the History of the Behavioral and Social Sciences. On September 13, 2012, American Madness: The Rise and Fall of Dementia Praecox won a 2012 BMA Medical Book Award - Highly Commended in Psychiatry from the British Medical Association. In March 2013, Scientific American Mind incorporated findings from American Madness in its print and online "timeline" on the history of schizophrenia. A brief favorable review of the book, along with a photo of its cover, appeared in the 27 October 2011 issue of Nature. "Tales of personal drama enliven Noll's story in a way that few would imagine possible for a historical account of nosology," said a reviewer in the American Journal of Psychiatry. According to sociologist Andrew Scull in the Journal of American History, "Richard Noll's American Madness is an important book that deserves a wide readership among those interested in understanding the development of American psychiatry between 1896 and the 1930s." In a September 2012 review in Isis historian John C. Burnham noted, "It is clearly written and is based on a remarkably thorough literature search and reading of primary sources. . . . Noll's book will become a useful narrative for much of the modern history of psychiatry in the United States." He further added, "the research and thinking that went into this book make it refreshing and valuable." Collaborative biomarkers research on schizophrenia research Since 2011, Noll has occasionally collaborated with an interdisciplinary group of schizophrenia researchers at the Bahn Laboratory at the University of Cambridge (UK) and the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam (the Netherlands). Their research program seeks to identify valid biomarkers that might serve as molecular endophenotypes of schizophrenia and