As we continue to toil through terrors remembered from the last century, up pops this little tome that quite successfully takes us back to the early years of the last century when psychology and the study of the dark side of our minds exerted its now immutable influence on all of history. In this scholarly but immensely entertaining dissection of the seeds within Egon Schiele's mind that produced a prodigious, fascinating body of figurative painting in a short life time, author Schroder investigates sexuality, mores, mental hospitals and those who captured the inmates on film, photography, and the crumbling of empires. Lavishly illustrated with not only many relatively unknown Schiele works but also with works by Gertsl, Klimt, Degas, Courbet and scientific photographs of the twisted minds and bodies caged in sanitariums, this book reads well and allows us to absorb just how significant Schiele was in opening 20th century art to new levels of exploration. This is a fine addition to libraries of artists, students, collectors, physicians, psychologists...and anyone who enjoys visiting the fin de sicle - asurring us that what seems crude today was seen, perhaps more naievly, a whole century ago!