This art is the key to understanding the isnsane, most people will be afraid of this art, it is disturbing. I highly recommend this book, as it is an monument to cruelty, as side we never see.

What an incredible personal story! This book is a must for anyone interested in Outsider Art. Judith Scott's history and artistic development are both moving and challenging; her work is fascinating, gorgeous, and incredibly complex, the photographs are fantastic; and the production values exquisite. It's one of those books you would love to give as a gift, but would rather keep for yourself.

For anyone looking to enter the unreal realms of Henry Darger, his writings and his artwork, MacGregor's book is essential. He has both exhaustively researched and reconstructed Darger's life as an isolated, perhaps mentally disturbed individual working as a dishwasher and janitor in Chicago and delved deeply into the often gruesome content of Darger's fantasy realm. The book itself is a wonder - it is like a great independent film, unflinching, provocative, well-constructed.

As an art therapist, I read Dr.John M.MacGregor's book, 'Henry
Darger,In the Realms of the Unreal'and marvelled at the potency of art as a therapeutic agent.

Henry Darger initiated his own therapy. He painted a torrent of images representing his rage. Without his art and his writing, I wonder who would have been the target of this volcanic fury.

John MacGregor's book is a must for all art therapy faculties and departments.

Beth Robinson

Darger's voluminous work, of which the drawings are only the tip of the iceberg, are inaccessable, literally, except for fragments published in a previous collection. Even if the full opus was available it would still be a alien monument due to it's sheer size, attracting only the peculiarly curious and those who have aquired the taste for Darger's vision. This said, MacGregor's work is a valuable description by a voyager to a dark continent who is capable of expressing the awe, fear and wonder that he experienced when immersed in this strange land. The book is lush, in design and writing, and each chapter tackles a different aspect of the Darger mystery. I imagine attempting to read all of Darger would cause the odd combination of shock and boredom that de Sade's work elicits, trangressive scenes compulsively written ad nausiam. MacGregor distills the major themes of Henry's work, avoids the mind-numbing repetition, yet preserves the vertigo of scale that Darger achieved, intentionally or otherwise. An odd masterpeice written about an even odder masterpeice.