In Liberty and Insanity in the Age of the American Revolution, Sarah L. Swedberg examines how conceptions of mental illness intersected with American society, law, and politics during the early American Republic. Swedberg illustrates how concerns about insanity raised difficult questions about the nature of governance. Revolutionaries built the American government based on rational principles, but could not protect it from irrational actors that they feared could cause the body politic to grow mentally or physically ill. This book is recommended for students and scholars of history, political science, legal studies, sociology, literature, psychology, and public health.

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The author has...established fertile ground for others’ considerations. Swedberg frames the book as a counter to a more institutional focus on asylums and as a re-minder that the founding was full of uncertainty and discord. Additionally, political theorists and historians of political culture will benefit from the liberty/insanity bond. The “madness” of Swedberg’s Revolution slots effortlessly into the recent historiographical interest in the plight of Loyalists, the disaffected, and all those who suffered the scourges of war. Anyone interested in affect or the formation of American identity will find much of value.