2008 Book Award of Merit Winner Announced
Thomas Doherty Wins Award for His Look Inside the Wisconsin Insane Hospital
Author Thomas Doherty has won the Wisconsin Historical Society's 2008 Book Award of Merit for The Best Specimen of a Tyrant: The Ambitious Dr. Abraham Van Norstrand and the Wisconsin Insane Hospital. A reviewer for Madison's Isthmus newspaper described the book as, "The story of a driven and unlucky man. In it, the reader also sees the attitudes toward mental illness in the latter half of the 19th century, and the impact of the Civil War on the mental states of its veterans. ... The Best Specimen of a Tyrant has a lively pace for a history, in part because Doherty is also a fiction writer who's had work published in The Iowa Review and other journals. He's structured his narrative around the mysterious and grisly death of a minister at the Insane Hospital, which was part of the original testimony he discovered in the appendix to the 1868 annual report. ... The Best Specimen of a Tyrant takes some detours, but it's an absorbing read, one with themes, including treatment of veterans, post-traumatic stress disorder, and corrupt actions by high ranking officials."
A panel of three independent judges selected Doherty's book for the award from a field of 24 nominees based on its factual accuracy, documentation, research methodology, graphic design, impact on the reading public, and overall contribution to the printed record on Wisconsin history.
The Wisconsin Historical Society Board of Curators' Awards Committee conferred the 2008 Book Award of Merit at its meeting in Arbor Vitae on Saturday, June 21. |
