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Title: disappointing and unconvincing
Review: I bought this book after reading reviews on various Amazon sites that suggested it was a history of mental illness in Britain and North America. Instead, it is an attempt to support the authors' belief that the incidence of 'insanity' has increased in the last three centuries due to 'urbanization'. The authors eventually define what they mean by 'insanity' in an appendix but even here there is no mention of differences in diagnostic criteria that have existed in different places at different times and still do exist. There is certainly no dearth of information in the book and some of it is accurate in itself but much seems to have been included more for 'padding' than for relevancy. I found the book unsatisfactory as medical history and unconvincing in its inferences.
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