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He Wanted the Moon: The Madness and Medical Genius of Dr. Perry Baird, and His Daughter's Quest to Know Him Audiobook
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Soon to be a major motion picture, from Brad Pitt and Tony Kushner A Washington Post Best Book of 2015 A mid-century doctor's raw, unvarnished account of his own descent into madness, and his daughter's attempt to piece his life back together and make sense of her own. Texas-born and Harvard-educated, Dr. Perry Baird was a rising medical star in the late 1920s and 1930s. Early in his career, ahead of his time, he grew fascinated with identifying the biochemical root of manic depression, just as he began to suffer from it himself. By the time the results of his groundbreaking experiments were published, Dr. Baird had been institutionalized multiple times, his medical license revoked, and his wife and daughters estranged. He later received a lobotomy and died from a consequent seizure, his research incomplete, his achievements unrecognized. Mimi Baird grew up never fully knowing this story, as her family went silent about the father who had been absent for most of her childhood. Decades later, a string of extraordinary coincidences led to the recovery of a manuscript which Dr. Baird had worked on throughout his brutal institutionalization, confinement, and escape. This remarkable document, reflecting periods of both manic exhilaration and clear-headed health, presents a startling portrait of a man who was a uniquely astute observer of his own condition, struggling with a disease for which there was no cure, racing against time to unlock the key to treatment before his illness became impossible to manage. Fifty years after being told her father would forever be “ill” and “away,” Mimi Baird set off on a quest to piece together the memoir and the man. In time her fingers became stained with the lead of the pencil he had used to write his manuscript, as she devoted herself to understanding who he was, why he disappeared, and what legacy she had inherited. The result of his extraordinary record and her journey to bring his name to light is He Wanted the Moon, an unforgettable testament to the reaches of the mind and the redeeming power of a determined heart.
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“Dr. Perry Baird’s vivid account of his own madness, and the treatment he received, is as remarkable as it is disturbing. By sharing her family’s story, Mimi Baird has certainly done a great service to her father’s memory. But she’s also made a significant contribution to the literature of mental health. He Wanted the Moon is a poignant book, and, I believe, an important one.”
— Alexandra Styron, author of Reading My Father
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“One of the most disturbing and profoundly moving books I’ve read in years and one of the great father-daughter books of our time.”
— Pat Conroy, New York Times bestselling author -
“An extraordinary Möbius strip of a book…Autobiography, biography, science, history and literature all in one, as instructive as any textbook and utterly impossible to put down.”
— New York Times -
“A remarkably eloquent account of mental illness…[The] narrative is cinematic, featuring Ratched-like nurses and an escape scene straight out of The Fugitive…[Dr. Baird] never really knew his daughter—or her achievement in telling this story.”
— Washington Post -
“Baird’s lonely, angry, grief-stricken, and occasionally grandiose account of his illness and its shattering costs is the reason we can’t put [this book] down.”
— Boston Globe -
“Through this moving memoir, Baird slowly brings her father back to life and reveals the sordid history of treating mental illness.”
— BookPage -
“Narrator Paul Boehmer nails the distinctive speech patterns of a person with bipolar disorder…This outstanding work with three narrators is a must-listen for all who yearn for greater understanding of mental disorders, as well as those who love a good story.”
— AudioFile -
“Powerful, fascinating, and completely unique. This heartbreaking book is a one-of-a-kind first person window into the world of psychiatric illness before the era of drug therapies in this country. Reading He Wanted the Moon is a bit like discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls—it is one of the most eloquent, powerful and important accounts of mental illness ever put to paper.”
— David Isay, author of Listening Is an Act of Love -
“Thanks to a daughter’s brave determination to excavate her absentee father’s life, we are gifted with deep personal insight into a brilliant but sick mind that could have been lost forever. This is a truly important book—a devastatingly honest account of mental illness that provides personal insight into long-ranging travesties of psychiatric care in the US. Unforgettable.”
— Susannah Cahalan, author of Brain on Fire
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About the Authors
Mimi Baird, a Bostonian, is a graduate of Colby Sawyer College. After working at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, she later moved to Woodstock, Vermont, where she worked as an office manager at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. There she met a surgeon who had once known her father, a meeting that prompted her quest to finally understand her father’s life and legacy.
Eve Claxton was born in London. She has been instrumental in creating six works of nonfiction as a cowriter or ghostwriter and is the editor of The Book of Life, an anthology of memoir. She also works with StoryCorps, the National Oral History Project featured on NPR. She lives with her husband and three children in Brooklyn.
About the Narrators
Jane Alexander‘s acting career has encompassed a Tony® Award, and six other nominations; she is a four time Oscar® nominee; the author of Command Performance, documenting her tenure as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 1993-1997; and she is Commissioner of Parks, the Taconic Region, for New York State.
John Bedford Lloyd, Earphones Award–winning narrator, is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama, has appeared in many major motion pictures, including The Bourne Supremacy, Crossing Delancey, The Abyss, The Manchurian Candidate, and Philadelphia. His television credits include Suits, Pan Am, Law & Order, Spin City, and The West Wing.
Paul Boehmer is an American actor best known for his numerous appearances in the Star Trek universe, in addition to Frasier, Judging Amy, Guiding Light, and All My Children. He is a 1992 Masters of Fine Arts graduate of the Professional Theater Training Program at the University of Delaware. As a narrator, Paul has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as an Audie Award.
Paul Boehmer is an American actor best known for his numerous appearances in the Star Trek universe, in addition to Frasier, Judging Amy, Guiding Light, and All My Children. He is a 1992 Masters of Fine Arts graduate of the Professional Theater Training Program at the University of Delaware. As a narrator, Paul has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as an Audie Award.