Author Guide · Memoir & Investigative Journalism
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In 2009 Susannah Cahalan was 24, a reporter at the New York Post, when she began having seizures, paranoia and hallucinations. Doctors suggested alcohol withdrawal, then schizoaffective and bipolar disorder, until the neurologist Souhel Najjar at NYU gave her a simple clock-drawing test that pointed to a physical cause. A brain biopsy confirmed anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, an autoimmune disease; she was, by one count, the 217th person in the world to be diagnosed with it. Her account, Brain on Fire, became a New York Times bestseller, and she has gone on writing about where psychiatry draws the line between mind and body. This guide covers her 3 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 3 key books · 2012–2025 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Susannah Cahalan has written three books: Brain on Fire (2012), a memoir of her autoimmune brain illness; The Great Pretender (2019), an investigation of the famous Rosenhan experiment; and The Acid Queen (2025), a biography of Rosemary Woodruff Leary. Start with Brain on Fire: it explains why the later books exist.
Where to Start with Susannah Cahalan
If you have never read her
→ Brain on Fire (2012) — the memoir that started everything.
If you want investigative reporting
→ The Great Pretender (2019) — a famous psychiatry study, checked source by source.
If you want biography and the 1960s
→ The Acid Queen (2025) — the woman beside Timothy Leary, from her own papers.
Susannah Cahalan’s Books in Order
Brain on Fire
Cahalan reconstructs the month in 2009 she cannot remember: the paranoia and seizures, the misdiagnoses, and the hospital stay at NYU, using medical records, interviews and video from her hospital room. The turning point is Dr. Souhel Najjar’s clock-drawing test and the brain biopsy that showed anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, followed by treatment and a full recovery. Free Press published it on 13 November 2012; it became a New York Times bestseller, has sold more than a million copies and was filmed for Netflix with Chloë Grace Moretz.
The Great Pretender
Cahalan investigates David Rosenhan’s “On Being Sane in Insane Places”, published in Science in 1973, in which eight sane people got themselves admitted to psychiatric hospitals by reporting a single symptom. Tracking down his records and the volunteers, she found discrepancies, a pseudopatient whose positive experience Rosenhan had left out, and others she could not trace at all. Grand Central published it in November 2019; it was shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize in 2020.
The Acid Queen
A biography of Rosemary Woodruff Leary (1935–2002), a former flight attendant and model who joined Timothy Leary’s psychedelic commune at Millbrook, New York, and was his wife from 1967 to 1976. She was arrested alongside him, helped arrange his 1970 prison escape with the Weather Underground, and then spent years as a fugitive abroad before her warrants were cleared in the 1990s. Viking published it on 22 April 2025; Cahalan draws on the papers Woodruff left at her death.
How to Read Susannah Cahalan
Read the books in the order she wrote them. Brain on Fire is the personal story; The Great Pretender grows directly out of it, because her own near-misdiagnosis made her ask how psychiatry tells illness of the mind from illness of the brain, and the Rosenhan study was the most famous answer.
The Acid Queen is a change of subject, a biography rather than reporting on psychiatry, though it still deals with altered minds and with a woman whose story others told for her. It can be read on its own. The Netflix film of Brain on Fire (2016, released 2018) is best watched after the book.
A reading path
1. Brain on Fire (2012)
2. The Great Pretender (2019)
3. The Acid Queen (2025)
The years · 1985–2025
Quick facts about Susannah Cahalan
- Known for
- Writing about her own misdiagnosed autoimmune brain illness in Brain on Fire, and then investigating how psychiatry tells mental illness from physical disease.
- 1985
- Born
- 2009
- Falls ill; diagnosed with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis
- 2012
- Brain on Fire
- 2019
- The Great Pretender
- 2025
- The Acid Queen
- Born
- 30 January 1985
- Education
- AB in English literature, Washington University in St. Louis (2007)
- Worked
- Reporter at the New York Post, where she still writes
- Illness
- Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, diagnosed in 2009 at NYU by Dr. Souhel Najjar; full recovery
- Adaptation
- Brain on Fire (film, 2016), directed by Gerard Barrett, with Chloë Grace Moretz; on Netflix from 2018
- Recognition
- Royal Society Science Book Prize shortlist (2020); American Brain Foundation Ambassador Award (2022)
The red mark is 2012: Brain on Fire, the memoir that made her name and set the subject of her later work.
How Susannah Cahalan Writes: A Reporter on Her Own Case
Cahalan writes as a reporter even when she is the subject. She has almost no memory of the month in Brain on Fire, so she treats it like a story she was assigned: she reads her medical records, interviews her doctors and family and watches the video of herself in a hospital bed. The book keeps “I” at a distance, separating what she remembers from what she has reconstructed.
The Great Pretender applies the same method to someone else. She set out to tell the story of a celebrated study and ended up testing it against archives, Rosenhan’s unpublished notes and the people she could find, and she lets the reader follow the reporting as her view of him changes. Both books turn on the same question: what doctors miss when a symptom looks psychiatric.
The Acid Queen moves from investigation to biography, built on Rosemary Woodruff Leary’s own papers; Cahalan has called it a more intimate writing experience than the first two books. For writers who work the same ground between medicine, the mind and reporting, see Authors like Susannah Cahalan.
Watch
Susannah Cahalan on Brain on Fire
Cahalan gives a TEDx talk, featured on her official website, about her illness and misdiagnosis.
Frequently asked questions about Susannah Cahalan’s books
How many books has Susannah Cahalan written?
Three: Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness (2012), The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness (2019) and The Acid Queen: The Psychedelic Life and Counterculture Rebellion of Rosemary Woodruff Leary (2025).
What are Susannah Cahalan’s books in order?
Brain on Fire (2012), The Great Pretender (2019), The Acid Queen (2025).
Where should I start with Susannah Cahalan?
With Brain on Fire. It is her best-known book and explains why she went on to investigate psychiatric diagnosis in The Great Pretender.
What is Susannah Cahalan’s most famous book?
Brain on Fire (2012). It was a New York Times bestseller, has sold more than a million copies, has been translated into more than twenty languages and was made into a film.
What illness did Susannah Cahalan actually have?
Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, a rare autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks the brain, causing symptoms such as psychosis, seizures and catatonia that can look like severe mental illness. Before the diagnosis she was told she might have alcohol withdrawal, schizoaffective disorder or bipolar disorder.
Is Brain on Fire a true story?
Yes. It is Cahalan’s own account of her 2009 illness and diagnosis, reconstructed from medical records, hospital video and interviews, because she remembers almost nothing of the month itself.
Is there a film of Brain on Fire?
Yes. Brain on Fire (2016) was directed by Gerard Barrett, with Chloë Grace Moretz as Cahalan, and was released on Netflix on 22 June 2018.
What is the Rosenhan experiment covered in The Great Pretender?
A study published in Science in 1973 as “On Being Sane in Insane Places”: psychologist David Rosenhan and seven others reported a single symptom to get admitted to psychiatric hospitals, then behaved normally to see whether staff would notice they were sane. It became one of the best-known studies in psychiatry.
Did Susannah Cahalan prove the Rosenhan study was a fraud?
She makes a strong case that it was misreported. In The Great Pretender she describes discrepancies between Rosenhan’s records and the published paper, a volunteer, Harry Lando, whose positive hospital experience was left out, and other pseudopatients she could not trace, and she suggests some may not have existed. Rosenhan died in 2012, so he could not answer her findings.
Who was Rosemary Woodruff Leary, the subject of The Acid Queen?
Timothy Leary’s wife from 1967 to 1976. She lived at his Millbrook commune, was arrested with him, helped arrange his 1970 prison escape and then spent years as a fugitive abroad. Cahalan’s 2025 biography draws on the papers she left when she died in 2002.
Has Susannah Cahalan won any awards?
The Great Pretender was shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize in 2020, and she received the American Brain Foundation’s Ambassador Award in 2022. She has also given the Spitzer Memorial Lecture at Columbia University (2020).
What should I read after Brain on Fire?
The Great Pretender, then writers who cover medicine and the mind, such as Oliver Sacks and Rachel Aviv. See Authors like Susannah Cahalan for more.
Footnotes
- Susannah Cahalan — Wikipedia
- Brain on Fire — Wikipedia
- About — susannahcahalan.com
- ‘The Great Pretender’ review — NPR (via WFAE), 2019
- The Acid Queen — Kirkus Reviews
- ‘Brain on Fire’ author describes her journey — Yale News, 2014
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“I wouldn’t take that terrible experience back for anything in the world; too much light has come out of my darkness.”
— Susannah Cahalan, talk at Yale University (2014), reported by Yale News
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