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A review by jabarkas
The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery by Sam Kean
4.0
Class A science writing, informative for beginners and engaging for experts.
A concise and engaging overview of the past and present of neurosurgery. Kean clearly understands the appeal of his subject matter, the unsettling yet fascinating reality of our brains as mechanical objects. I particularly enjoyed the pacing of his analysis, starting with the early medical resistance to accepting that the brain was even an organ and slowly reaching the frightening reality that perception and personality are nothing more than chemical processes. I found the book uniquely effective at enabling the reader to understand and FEEL the brain as a fallible and discrete system.
Kean's anecdotal writing style lends itself particularly well to this as well, giving the reader a personal connection the profound information he is dolling out. Though I was familiar with a lot of the case studies he mentions, Kean brings a unique depth of research to them and considers contrary arguments to his own in a considered and reasonable way. This means that his conclusions never feel forced or rushed, while at the same time lending each individual case analysis a living depth that few other science writers manage. I found the book uniquely effective at enabling the reader to understand and FEEL the brain as a fallible and discrete system.
Class A science writing, informative for beginners and engaging for experts.
A concise and engaging overview of the past and present of neurosurgery. Kean clearly understands the appeal of his subject matter, the unsettling yet fascinating reality of our brains as mechanical objects. I particularly enjoyed the pacing of his analysis, starting with the early medical resistance to accepting that the brain was even an organ and slowly reaching the frightening reality that perception and personality are nothing more than chemical processes. I found the book uniquely effective at enabling the reader to understand and FEEL the brain as a fallible and discrete system.
Kean's anecdotal writing style lends itself particularly well to this as well, giving the reader a personal connection the profound information he is dolling out. Though I was familiar with a lot of the case studies he mentions, Kean brings a unique depth of research to them and considers contrary arguments to his own in a considered and reasonable way. This means that his conclusions never feel forced or rushed, while at the same time lending each individual case analysis a living depth that few other science writers manage. I found the book uniquely effective at enabling the reader to understand and FEEL the brain as a fallible and discrete system.
Class A science writing, informative for beginners and engaging for experts.