A worthwhile and surprisingly easy read for anyone interested in mental illness... Few journalists now leave their desks in search of a story. Vincent reminds us that there is a (locked, secret) world beyond our office windows and internet search engines

The writing is tight, funny .... and full of brilliant observations... A fascinating journey. A sex change and now madness - one can't help wondering what she will do next

The originality of Voluntary Madness lies in the fact that Vincent is reporting from inside the system at its three cardinal levels: a hard-core public institution, a more congenial private equivalent, and an intensively personalised therapeutic realm. As near as is possible in a single account, this presents the full spectrum of psychiatry in operation

Vincent's a skilled, witty and honest observer, particularly of her fellow patients

Her account veers sharply into a dissection of her own mental health problems but she asks pertinent questions about whether locking people up really helps

Top marks to Vincent for having the guts to pull off her scheme

The writing is tight and funny ... and full of brilliant observations

Her immersive approach to her subject matter allows a lot of insight that wouldn't be possible with a more traditional, objective style of journalism and this is what makes her book work...Voluntary Madness is a very personal account of what it's like to be committed... it's worth a read

A brave and compelling book

A delightful read that will stimulate the scientist inside everyone

This slender, elegantly written memoir by a female surgeon, Gabriel Weston, is a fascinating, no holds barred account of life in the operating theatre

Through this insightful book, Weston succeeds superbly in communicating the fascinating brutal reality of a surgeon's life

Gabriel Weston's story succeeds better than any I have known...more riveting and thought-provoking than any fiction

Glinting like a tray of instruments, her prose is satisfyingly precise

A curiously thrilling read, written with an elegance heightened by its clarity and economy

A valuable and unflinching account, since it so clearly tells the truth

This book is mesmerising

Her description of the struggle to remain individual and hence moral is her real achievement. This, to me, is what female writing has to do, and she does it with style and humour and beauty

Richard Dawkin's new book... gives the fact-rejecters their just deserts

The book is full of evidence, some familiar and some new. Its case is presented in a manner succinct, clear and sometimes vivid

No other book currently available approaches Dawkin's comprehensive yet accessible treatment of the extraordinarily diverse and massive body of data that drives ineluctably to the same conclusion

The Greatest Show on Earth is a lucid, thorough and often exciting survey of evolution and takes in rats' teeth, dogs, bacteria, the so-called missing link, crustaceans, giraffe anatomy, hummingbirds, chimpanzees, enzymes - you name it. It is informed in nearly every paragraph by Mr. Dawkins's irrepressible enthusiasm

The Greatest Show on Earth... is essential reading. I would currently rate it... as the best overall book on the evidence for Evolution

This is a magnificent book of wonderstanding: Richard Dawkins combines an artist's wonder at the virtuosity of nature with a scientist's understanding of how it comes to be