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Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
April 2008
On Sale: April 1, 2008
320 pages
ISBN: 0374134529
EAN: 9780374134525
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Head Cases takes us into the dark side of the brain in an
astonishing sequence of stories, at once true and strange,
from the world of brain injury. Michael Paul Mason is one of an elite group of experts who
appear in the wake of tragic accidents and coordinate care
that can last a lifetime. On the road with Mason, we
encounter survivors of brain injuries as they struggle to
map and make sense of the new worlds they inhabit. We meet a
snowboarder whose life became permanently surreal after an
errant jump; an "ultraviolent" child who has lost the
brain's instinctive check on the impulse to strike out at
others; a young man who cannot cry; and an Iraq war veteran
whose odd maladies suggest that brain injury will be the
war's most conspicuous legacy. Underlying each of their stories is an exploration into the
brain and its mysteries. When injured, the brain must figure
out how to heal itself, reorganizing its physiology in order
to do the job, and Mason gives us a series of vivid glimpses
into brain science, the last frontier of medicine. We come
away in awe of the miracles of the brain's workings and
astonished at the fragility of the brain and the sense of
self, life, and order that resides there. Head Cases echoes
both Oliver Sacks and Raymond Carver, and is at once
illuminating and deeply affecting.
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