The Tale of the Duelling Neurosurgeons
  • Published: 1 June 2015
  • ISBN: 9781784161033
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $32.00

The Tale of the Duelling Neurosurgeons

The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery

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EBook
17 Jul 2014
Paperback
1 Jun 2015
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From the author of the bestseller The Disappearing Spoon, a new history of the brain told via fascinating tales of the greatest and most astounding injuries in neuroscience

For centuries, scientists had only one way to study the brain: wait for misfortune to strike - strokes, seizures, infections, lobotomies, horrendous accidents, phantom limbs, Siamese twins - and see how the victims changed afterwards. In many cases their survival was miraculous, and observers marvelled at the transformations that took place when different parts of the brain were destroyed. Parents suddenly couldn't recognise their children. Pillars of the community became pathological liars and paedophiles. Some people couldn't speak but could still sing. Others couldn't read but could write.
The stories of these people laid the foundations of modern neuroscience and, century by century, key cases taught scientists what every last region of the brain did. With lucid explanations and incisive wit, Sam Kean explores the brain's secret passageways and recounts the forgotten tales of the ordinary individuals whose struggles, resilience and deep humanity made neuroscience possible.
  • Published: 1 June 2015
  • ISBN: 9781784161033
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $32.00
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About the author

Sam Kean

Sam Kean spent years collecting mercury from broken thermometers as a child and now he is a writer in Washington DC. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Mental Floss, Slate, Air & Space/Smithsonian and New Scientist. In 2009 he was a runner-up for the National Association of Science Writers' Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award for best science writer under the age of thirty. He currently writes for Science. His first book, The Disappearing Spoon, was a New York Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Royal Society's Winton Prize for science writing.

Also by Sam Kean

Caesar's Last Breath
The Disappearing Spoon...and other true tales from the Periodic Table
The Violinist's Thumb
See all

Praise for The Tale of the Duelling Neurosurgeons

Kean's lively new book unpacks a bundle of fascinating, alarming and sometimes heartbreaking case histories

Mail on Sunday

Entertaining... Some of his stories are astonishing... Kean tells a good story and asks the right questions

The Sunday Times

Kean...reveal[s] how intracranial calamities have built neuroscience case by puzzled-out case, gross anatomy to consciousness. However pop the science, there is much to compel

Nature

The author's skill in illuminating how the brain functions and malfunctions manifest themselves in people's lives makes for absorbing reading....These avowals ultimately raise weighty, compelling questions about the nature of identity and what it means to be human

Wall Street Journal