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There are currently 42 member reviews
for He Wanted the Moon
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Sande O. (Rochester, NY)
She Wanted to Know her Father
In Mimi Baird's search for her father Doctor Perry Baird, we get to follow her sad lifelong journey from childhood to 75. Although he died a broken man in 1960. Doctor Baird was lost to Mimi in 1944 when he suffered a critical manic episode and was confined to a mental hospital in Connecticut. From that point on Mimi's father was, in her mother's words "away." At four Mimi remembered just enough of her father to miss him desperately. When he died she and her sister went to funeral in Texas and ultimately came into possession of her father's journal/manuscript he wrote while in the Connecticut hospital.
This book tells the very tragic story of a genius physician suffering from manic depression and trying to find a cause/cure from the inside out. As it turns out he was on the right track, but treatment of the mentally ill in the 40s and 50s was so horrid it finally destroyed his brilliant mind. In the end Dr. Baird never reached the moon, but his daughter and the reader come to know and appreciate a great, misunderstood man.
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Kathleen B. (Las Vegas, NV)
The stigma of mental illness
I appreciate BookBrowse for giving me the opportunity to read an Arc of He Wanted the Moon. I requested this book because I am bi-polar with psychotic episodes. Mine is controlled with drugs but that unfortunately was not available to Dr. Perry Baird. He suffered terribly with his manic episodes that eventually took everything that mattered to him in his life away from him. A brilliant physician subjected to unbelievable indignities and torture. Being put in a straight jacket and tied to the bed for days. Having freezing bed sheets tightly bound on him for days. Being beaten, given little to eat at times. The Doctor in charge seemed to hate the mentally ill and feel that torturing them was how to make them better. But when you were finally let out of this nightmare you had to deal with everyone avoiding you. You had a big mark on you Mentally Ill and there was no getting away from the stigma of that. If I had been born twenty years earlier I would have lived at the State Hospital.
I think this book would be a good read for many people. For history buffs, those interested in mental illness and family dynamics.
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Rebecca J. (Knoxville, TN)
He wanted the moon by Mimi Baird
Upon starting this small book, the journal of a brilliant bipolar doctor of the 50's, I wondered about the number of people who might be interested. It turned out to be a page turner for me - the doctor's journal and his daughter's narrative of what she knew and when she knew it about her father's life and illness. Terribly sad, but even with a modest interest in mental illness, I was fascinated by his mind and by the way he was treated (I use that word very loosely) by the hospital. When the doctors put him in freezing bedsheets, tighlly bound for days, I was aghast to say the least. Most people will know at least one brilliant person who this guy reminds you of, and maybe after reading, you will be sure to treat the victim and his family with the belief that mental illness, just like a physical illness, is no one's fault and there should be no stigma.
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Barbara K. (Brooklyn, NY)
Shades of Cuckoo's Nest
Mimi Baird had faint memories of her father and talks of how his disappearance from her life at the age of 6, affected her. When his hand written memoir was unearthed from a briefcase kept by a family member, she was 56. The result was this book, He Wanted the Moon.
This tragic first person telling by a Harvard trained physician, illustrates how a person with a manic disorder in the 1940s suffered loss of family, friends, profession, self esteem and dignity, eventually becoming an outcast from society.
Dr, Baird also writes about his thought processes, giving the reader a clue as to how 'out of control' a person with a manic disorder thinks and behaves. While this man was clearly ill, there was almost no help for him.
He Wanted the Moon is heartbreaking to read but it is an important book, for it clearly illustrates the barbaric & cruel treatments patients underwent in the 1940s. I recommend it to everyone, especially to all psychology students.
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Iris F. (Delay Beach, FL)
He Wanted the Moon
Personally aware of the devastation to family and friends as well as to the victim of manic depression I had some misgivings about reading this book. However, I was immediately absorbed in the tragic story of the brilliant
Dr Perry Baird. This was a man whose life was stolen by this brutal disease personally and professionally. The ghoulish medical protocol of 1940s mental institutions was barbaric and difficult to read. Dr Baird's struggle for sanity was heartbreaking. It is amazing that so many years later his daughter found his scattered memoirs and was able to piece them together and tell his story in a logical and concise format. In doing so she created a spellbinding book as well as answering for herself the reason her father was absent from her life. I would definitely recommend this book
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Christine B. (Scottsdale, AZ)
He Wanted the Moon
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I was a psychiatric nurse in the late 1960's at a large University hospital and I was lucky enough to be head nurse on the floor where we did all the Lithium testing for our manic depressive patients. Needless to say the results were extraordinary- especially to see first hand. I so admire Mimi Baird for writing this book about her father and the effect his illness had, not only on his own life but that of his family , friends, and colleagues. She humanized this traumatic illness with its myriad of complications. Dr. Baird was obviously a gifted physician and I am so sad that Dr. Baird died before the wonder drug Lithium was released to the public. I would recommend this book to all readers, familiar with manic depression or not. It is a story for all of us.
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Kristen H. (Hagerstown, MD)
The love a daughter
Wow. What a great read! How hard it must have been to relive her dad's life through his eyes. What an impressive honor to a father, a daughter who wanted to know about her father all her life and had to wait until he was no longer alive. Truly an inspiration.
