With diagnoses of mental illness on an apparently inexorable rise, this is a timely, troubling study of the evolution of the diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses in women. Sensitive studies of famous cases - Sylvia Plath, Zelda Fitzgerald - along with clear explanations of the often inexact science of mental illness provide a fascinating, digestible study, a careful examination of the particularities of mental disorders in women, but also more broadly an analysis of psychiatry over the past 200 years. A book on this topic can't be anything but bleak, but Appignanesi manages to maintain glimmers of hope.