Millard Wright, a criminal psychopath, underwent a frontal lobotomy operation in 1947. This popularized account resembles somewhat the life of Bonnie and Clyde. It reads like a Horatio Alger story in reverse. Presumably, the general public, for whom this was apparently intended, finds some vicarious interest in this sort of biography. One wonders why the book was written and published more than two decades after the event and long after interest in psychosurgical procedures has all but vanished. It lacks any sense of immediacy. The reasons for the resistance to the operation, as well as for its attendant publicity, seem generally inadequate.
Save for co-author Dr. Koskoff, the neurosurgeon who performed the operation and tried to befriend Wright, none of the "characters" portrayed in the book arouses much sympathy. The reportorial style and pseudodramatic prose, presumably fashioned by co-author Richard Goldhurst, finally becomes somewhat wearisome to the eye and ear.