About the Author

Allen Frances, MD, is professor emeritus and former chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Duke University School of Medicine. Dr. Frances was the chairman of the DSM-IV Task Force and a member of the leadership group for DSM-III and DSM-III-R. He is the author of the award-winning international bestseller Saving Normal and the reference work Essentials of Psychiatric Diagnosis. He lives in San Diego, California.

Reviews

“Terrifying. ... Investigate[s] Trump’s sanity at full length. ... Frances applies his psychiatric expertise to diagnosing and understanding our mass affliction.” — Slate

“This welcome and insightful book joins a small shelf of essential titles—Arlie Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land is another—that help explain why and how the Trump presidency happened.” — Kirkus Reviews

“An unusual and important book.” — Elle

“Allen Frances is right: the deep questions are not about Trump but about the society in which he became even a plausible candidate, much less the president. May Twilight of American Sanity be an opportunity to think more clearly about who we are and what we really want!” — Bill McKibben, environmentalist and author of The End of Nature and Free Radio Vermont

“One of the world’s most prominent psychiatrists.” — The Atlantic (July/August, 2017)

“For some mental-health practitioners, the ethical debate [over Trump’s mental state] is a distraction from a larger point. In Twilight of American Sanity, Allen Frances argues that the more urgent concern is unravelling the national psyche that brought our politics to this moment.” — Evan Osnos, The New Yorker

“An eminent psychiatrist.” — New York Times

“Lively, provocative. ... Frances indicts our broader societal insanity for electing Trump and embracing his views, and offers wide-ranging insights into human behavior and the consequences for society and governance.” — Norman Ornstein, contributing writer, The Atlantic; columnist, National Journal; and resident scholar, the American Enterprise Institute

“The State of the Nation according to the nation’s leading psychiatrist: Allen Frances’s Twilight of American Sanity is informed, insightful, illuminating, interesting, occasionally infuriating, but almost always right.” — Sir Simon Wessely, president of the Royal Society of Medicine and Regius Professor of Psychiatry at King’s College, London

“Hard-hitting. ... A must-read.” — New York Journal of Books