A fascinating and fun story of adventures and trips about how society and its myths can make us totally crazy. Geography of madness: in search of the lost penis and other collective delusions is an investigation of the syndromes "linked to culture" that, no doubt, are much stranger than they seem. Why, for example, do some men believe, against all reason and evidence, that the vandals stole their penises? What motivated groups of people in India to believe they had a lizard under their skin? What is the origin of voodoo that is present in Africa as well as in America? And what about the latah, that curious state to which William Burroughs referred in The Naked Lunch, and which provokes dances and spasmodic movements? Frank Bures travels all over the world to trace the origins of the syndromes linked to culture and, while dealing with that, tells an extraordinary story about all the strange things we believe in. But do not think that mental extravagance is patrimony of "primitive" or remote worlds because the belief in the incredible also filters through the many cracks of contemporary reason. The foolishness is stubborn, the delirium knows no boundaries and the anomaly is incorporated into the norm. We see it (and we even suffer it) on a daily basis. Frank Bures has managed to build a complex, subtle and fascinating reflection on the fictions that define us as a species.