The popular image of Vincent Van Gogh is that of a tortured genius, an ear-hacking wacko who almost helplessly painted masterpiece after masterpiece as he spiraled toward madness. Albert Boime, an art historian at the University of California at Los Angeles, makes a persuasive counter argument. He contends that Van Gogh's work, far from being the product of schizophrenia, manic-depression, or some other psychopathology, is the expression of an orderly mind with an affinity for scientific imagery.

Van Gogh's dramatic picture of the swirling night sky over Saint-Remy is familiar to lovers of postimpressionism everywhere. But when Albert Boime determined that the painting almost exactly represented the predawn sky of June 19, 1889, he realized there was much more to Starry Night than meets the eye. What he discovered was a fascinating convergence of historical forces. From the observatory atop the newly built Eiffel Tower, visitors could look down on the 1889 World's Fair, where the Third Republic was showcasing its far-flung colonies as well as the latest technological wonders. Jules Verne was taking readers to the moon, the ocean floor, and around the world in eighty days. Astronomy and astrology had seized the imagination of the public. Boime theorizes that Van Gogh, far from being an isolated lunatic (his brother and his friend Gauguin kept him posted), was in fact responding to these tumultuous times with Starry Night