NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'Madness, though ostensibly the story of Crownsville, is really about the continued lack of understanding, treatment and care of the mental health of a people, Black people, who need it most' New York TimesIn the tradition of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a page-turning 93-year history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the United States' last segregated asylums. On a cold day in March of 1911, officials marched twelve Black men into the heart of a forest in Maryland. Under the supervision of a doctor, the men were forced to clear the land, pour cement, lay bricks and harvest tobacco. When construction finished, they became the first twelve patients of the state's Hospital for the Negro Insane. In Madness, Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist Antonia Hylton tells the 93-year-old history of Crownsville Hospital. She blends the intimate tales of patients and employees whose lives were shaped by Crownsville with a decade-worth of investigative research
