Madness is something that scares and excites us all. In the book "A SMALL INTRODUCTION: Madness," Andrew Scull provocatively and entertainingly explores the social, cultural, medical, and artistic representations of mental disorder over more than two thousand years.

He demonstrates how madness has been described throughout the ages in poetry, prose, theater, and the visual arts, and explains how an entire industry has been created to manage and suppress it.

Yet, the use of the term madness is no longer acceptable in polite discussions...