Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

  • Apple
  • Android
  • Windows Phone
  • Android

To get the free app, enter your email address or mobile phone number.
Download to your computer
Kindle Cloud Reader
Facebook Twitter Pinterest <Embed>
Buy Used
$7.44
FREE Shipping on orders over $25.
Used: Good | Details
Sold by TrnThePage
Fulfilled by Amazon
Condition: Used: Good
Comment: Clean. Great Binding. Cover Shows Light Wear.

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service we offer sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's fulfillment centers, and we directly pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products. Something we hope you'll especially enjoy: FBA items qualify for FREE Shipping and .

If you're a seller, Fulfillment by Amazon can help you increase your sales. We invite you to learn more about Fulfillment by Amazon .

Sorry, there was a problem.

There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Please try again.

Sorry, there was a problem.

List unavailable.
Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon
Flip to back Flip to front
Listen Playing... Paused   You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more
See this image

Stalking Irish Madness: Searching for the Roots of My Family's Schizophrenia Hardcover – August 26, 2008

by
Patrick Tracey (Author)
› Visit Amazon's Patrick Tracey Page
Find all the books, read about the author, and more.
See search results for this author
Are you an author? Learn about Author Central
Patrick Tracey (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars 44 customer reviews
See all 2 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions
Price
New from Used from
Hardcover
"Please retry"
—
$6.10 $0.01
The Mediterranean World: From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Napoleon
European and Renaissance History
Wide-ranging scholarship covering Renaissance history in Europe. Hardcover | See more

Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested In These Sponsored Links

  (What's this?)
NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE
Image
Interested in the Audiobook Edition?
If you’re the author, publisher, or rights holder of this book, let ACX help you produce the audiobook.Learn more.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Bantam; 1st edition (August 26, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0553805258
  • ISBN-13: 978-0553805253
  • Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1 x 8.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #573,309 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested In These Sponsored Links

  (What's this?)

Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars"Here be dragons": at the edge of Ireland's genetic map?
By John L Murphy TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on October 1, 2008
Format: Kindle Edition
Since my family comes from around the same area as Tracey's in the Irish west, I was curious to follow Bostonian native while "searching for the roots of my family's schizophrenia." It's what he defines poetically as "an apocalyptic form of madness because it robs its victim of our most precious human gift: the ability to separate the real world from the unreal and to trust one's own thoughts as true." (10)

Two of his sisters, his uncle, his grandmother, and her grandmother in turn had been struck by this affliction in their young adulthood. Mixing his personal saga with encounters with those who share the illness and those who argue-- variously-- how to cope with its assaults, Tracey witnesses New Age-aligned healers, medical professionals (who turn out to know much less than one might expect), and those who guard their own family's similar secrets. He follows the history of the disease in Ireland, and integrates smoothly much of the nation's history and trauma on an island-wide level with the impact felt on the domestic and institutional fronts over centuries. Tracey wonders if the legend that the Irish have been so cursed more than other peoples can be validated by genetic research, so he embarks on a quest to Ireland to investigate.

He begins his account with a look at his two sisters and what he knows of his family's previous incidents; he blends his own memoir with a commendable combination of tact and candor. He's excellent at gleaning what separates Irish Americans, in turn, from those born there, and his chapter about a night in a Co.Read more ›
8 Comments 20 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsHeartbreaking Story, Wonderfully Written
By Meredith VINE VOICE on September 3, 2008
Format: Hardcover
I am so thoroughly enjoying this book, even though my heart breaks on each page. Tracey has researched farther back than I could even fathom tracing my own family tree. His tales about his family are interesting and so well told that I can see the houses. I feel as if I know the great-grandmother, I can almost feel her pain.

He describes schizophrenia in words that I have never heard before. It has opened another level of understanding. The horror that is losing someone in the blink of an eye, having them replaced with a different person, is terrifying. I found myself checking my age versus the statistics, wondering if my own children are safe.

My heart goes out to him for all of his tragedy. But I do so appreciate his ability to put it into words and on paper for everyone to experience.
1 Comment 15 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsExcellent book, a painful read
By trp on January 26, 2009
Format: Hardcover
It was difficult for me to make myself read Patrick Tracey's book because his story is too much like my own. My Irish ancestors, like Mr. Tracey's, came from County Roscommon in the wake of the Irish Famine and worked in cotton and woolen mills in Providence. Mr. Tracey captures the experience of having loved ones "taken" by schizophrenia and the resulting family disruptions with painful eloquence. Much as I appreciate that part of the book, what I most appreciated was the research into the genetic and environmental factors that have gone into making this horrible disease such a part of the Irish experience. Finally, an explanation. Maybe, someday, a cure.
Comment 8 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsAn engaging, heartbreaking memoir
By Tracey5200 on May 28, 2013
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
This book has made an indelible impression on me. Mr. Tracey is an excellent storyteller and journalist, and his writing is both elucidating and touching. I discovered this book while searching for information on Tracey genealogy and bought it out of curiosity. Once I started reading it, I found it hard to put down. Mr. Tracey's love for his family and his heartbreak over his sisters pours through every page, and yet he manages to leave the reader with a sense of hope that someday the great mystery of schizophrenia will be solved. I highly recommend this book.
Comment 3 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsStalking Irish Madness:Searching for the Roots of My Family's Schizophrenia
By Maryellen O'Leary on May 30, 2009
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
I really enjoyed this book immensely. It was so sad and it hit home with my own feelings. I was impressed with his writing and the history was great and the best part was his love for his sisters. It was shared already with several people that have children affected by this disease by far the worst disease on earth. It robs young people of a life. I enjoyed the book and would highly recommend it.
Comment 6 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsStalking Irish Madness: 'a beautiful gift'
By W. P. Keeler on November 29, 2008
Format: Hardcover
I didn't so much read as devour Stalking Irish Madness: Searching for The Roots of my Family's Schizophrenia, in which writer Patrick Tracey travels to Ireland to unravel the origins of his Irish-American family's multi-generational struggle with schizophrenia. Two of Tracey's sisters, his uncle, his grandmother, and a grandmother several generations back have been victims of the brain disorder.
Tracey had the discipline to hold back the drama and fireworks that many writers would have been tempted to include in a book about schizophrenia. His love for his sisters is so palpable and sweet that it makes what happens to them stand out starkly and heartbreakingly in a way that histrionics could not.
The structure--part memoir, part history, part Travels with Charley, part detective nonfiction--and Tracey's insight, honesty, and sense of humor make the book a page-turner. He writes easily about the dry stuff, which all too often writers can make stultifying: history, medicine, mythology. Tracey's journey through Ireland past and present is a worthy read unto itself.
Stalking Irish Madness: Searching for The Roots of my Family's Schizophrenia will share space on my bookshelf with others that have changed my way of looking at the human brain and helped me understand a little about what it's like to live with mental illness or mental differences: An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jameson, about bipolar disorder; and Temple Grandin's Thinking in Pictures, about autism, among them.
The book is a beautiful gift to Tracey's sisters; to families whose pasts, presents, and futures have been and will be marked by schizophrenia; to all of us who have struggled or have loved anyone who has; and to all who are seeking understanding about ourselves and about love.
Comment 5 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse

Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 starsFour Stars

Good story and good info on a tragic sickness

Published 2 months ago by Edward Sterba
2.0 out of 5 starsWhy the Book Doesn't Deserve More Stars

An interesting book, but the lack of fact-checking is appalling. It made me doubt much of what I read, because I wondered whether it was true. Read more

Published 6 months ago by Martha
5.0 out of 5 starsStalking a Family's History

Patrick Tracey offers more than a beautifully written book about schizophrenia. He tells a family history in the context of places—Boston and Ireland. Read more

Published 7 months ago by barbara trachtenberg
3.0 out of 5 starsBook is of modest to middling value.

For anyone wishing to know something about the heritability of schizophrenia Mr. Tracey has written an adequate book with <Stalking Irish Madness>. Read more

Published 8 months ago by Ronald E. Parsons
5.0 out of 5 starsStalking Irish Madness

I did not expect the book to be as enjoyable as it is. Patrick Tracey really has insight into schizophrenia that helps others to see it though eyes of people who suffer. Read more

Published on July 3, 2013 by Kathleen Peterson
5.0 out of 5 starsEnjoyable easy read that provides a layman's understanding

As an irish lass and a psychology student, naturally the title caught my attention. I enjoyed the way the book was written. Read more

Published on March 5, 2012 by Elizabeth R. Merkle
5.0 out of 5 starsappreciated this book

I appreciated the author sharing his story...I better understood the horror of having this illness in a family..also, just an interesting read..highly recommend

Published on September 4, 2011 by Kevin B. Haas
5.0 out of 5 starsMoved Me

I'd meant to read this book after it won the PEN New England award for nonfiction. It's not the sort of topic one warms to easily so I put it off. Read more

Published on September 30, 2010 by Sparky 88
2.0 out of 5 starsNot too sure about this one

Although the author's intent is clear, the book is loaded with silly metaphors. I expected to read, "It was a dark and stormy night" at the beginning of each chapter. Read more

Published on September 27, 2010 by Toni S. Bibliophile
5.0 out of 5 starsWow! Quite sure the best book on the subject.

All I can say is if you are in any way intrigued by the title, read it!

Published on August 3, 2010 by Books-a-lot

There's a problem loading this menu right now.

Learn more about Amazon Prime.