I've read a number of personal or secondary accounts of mental illness - but this one stands out for a few reasons. Through Kolker's retelling of the Galvin family history, you're able to see not only how psychosis affected the six children diagnosed but how it affected the six neurotypical children, their parents, and their community. The undiagnosed siblings were impacted in profoundly different ways, some withdrawing completely, some left abandoned after their childhood best friends and brothers became unmoored by psychosis, and others wholly committing themselves to the care of their siblings. It was moving to watch them each grieve, whatever that looked like, for siblings who were still alive but lost in another way. Over the course of the book, you gain sympathy for a mother who at times seems to have been more authoritarian than I would have liked - but how else would a mother cope with the deck of cards she was dealt? I also enjoyed that this book did not spend too much time on the specifics of what psychosis looked and felt like to the sick brothers. Many of the books I've read about psychosis almost romanticize the hallucinations and delusions in a way, spending time on sensationalizing the break from reality. While it is important to understand these symptoms in order to empathize with impacted individuals, I liked that this book focused on the impacts of the medications used to quell them because the impact of treatment is just as important! The final part of this book that stood out to me was the historical review of schizophrenia research woven throughout the story of the Galvin family. Their story is very tightly bound to the history of schizophrenia research, and to tell their story without that context would be a disservice. Overall, I thought Kolker did a great job because I couldn't detect him in the book at all - he simply told a story as it deserved to be told, with dignity and honesty.