My Book Reviews

  Review of Song of the Goldfinch : Memoir (2023), Veritas, Dublin by John F. Deane John F. Deane is a well-known Irish and international poet who was born on Achill Island, County Mayo, Ireland.  He has also authored two novels and several collections of short stories.  Much of his work reflects the beauty, tranquillity and at times the ruggedness and wildness of this unspoilt landscape and powerful seascape.  His curriculum vitae is impressive.  He is the founder of the national poetry society called Poetry Ireland and of its prestigious and internationally acknowledged journal Poetry Ireland Review . He is also the founder of the Dedalus Press , of which he was editor from 1985 until 2006. In 2006 he was a visiting scholar in the Burns Library of Boston College , and in 2016 was Teilhard de Chardin Fellow in Christian Studies at Loyola University, Chicago. In 2019 he was a visiting poet at Notre Dame University, Indiana. His poems have been translated ...

I wrote the following some twenty or so years ago by way of learning the main points about the history of insanity for a psychology course I was then attending. This is a brief summary of Madness: A Brief History (OUP, 2002).  The book is a short but incisive history of madness by the late great scholar and historian of psychiatry , Dr Roy Porter ( 1946 — 2002).  He was a British historian noted for his prolific work on the history of medicine.  Perhaps the following brief notes may inspire readers interested in psychiatry to read this well-written book. We should not be too quick to jump to conclusions about anyone.  Everyone is worth the benefit of the doubt as they say.  I am not sure where the demarcation lines between sanity and madness lie.  Psychiatrists today do not use the substantives "madness" or "insanity" or the related adjectives "mad" or "insane" respectively.  They do not use the term "sanity" or its related adjective...