One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest – Ken Kesey

A story about a feisty, confrontational man, McMurphy, who is admitted to an mental institution after some violent disputes which occurred while he was serving time on work detail as a prisoner. Revelations of his questionable past suggest he is a little headstrong, but also, perhaps, simply the victim of human indiscretion. As a patient in a mental institution, it appears that McMurphy really doesn't belong in such a facility. His zeal for life is contagious and he tries to rally the patients to break out of their malaise, which ultimately brings him up against the authorities of the institution.

The book challenges notions about what determines a man's sanity and finally suggests that man must take control of his own life and not let other people control it. The story is told through one of the patients, Chief Broom, a Native American, who had fooled everyone in the institution into believing that he was dumb: that he could neither speak nor hear. These are his observations and, as he documents the story of McMurphy, Chief Broom began to reign in his personal fears and, eventually, took matters into his own hands for the book's surprise ending.