Robert Whitaker, the author of Mad in America, has won numerous awards as a journalist covering medicine and science. In the past few years, he has won the George Polk Award for Medical Writing and a National Association for Science Writers’ Award for best magazine article (which appeared in Fortune). In 1998, he co-wrote a series on psychiatric research for the Boston Globe which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Prior to writing Mad in America, he co-founded a publishing company, CenterWatch, that covered the drug-development industry. He also previously worked as director of publications at Harvard Medical School, and was a features/medical writer at the Albany Times Union newspaper, in Albany, N.Y., for a number of years. His newest book is The Mapmaker's Wife: A True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon.
