The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness (Large Print / Library Binding)
November 2019 Indie Next List
“Susannah Cahalan, the bestselling author of Brain on Fire, is back with another riveting true story of madness and the mental health system. In the 1970s, Dr. David Rosenhan convinced seven sane people to join him in committing themselves to mental hospitals as patients and trying to get out on their own. What begins as an inspiring and daring story of experimentation darkens and twists as Cahalan closes in on a story shrouded in mystery—who were these seven ‘pseudopatients’ in Rosenhan’s groundbreaking study, and what really happened to them? The Great Pretender is not-to-be-missed narrative nonfiction.”
— Megan Bell, Underground Books, Carrollton, GA
Winter 2020 Reading Group Indie Next List
“Cahalan dives deep into the personal papers of the professor who, years ago, designed a study of mental institutions that had participants go undercover as pseudo-patients. Having experienced a mental break herself due to a severe illness, the author tells a gripping tale and brings it even closer to her readers by folding in personal details. Her past experience as a journalist has her uncovering details never before known about this study, and her storytelling is unmatched.”
— Sissy Gardner, Parnassus Books, Nashville, TN