Rent Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath

"A POWERFULLY WRITTEN BOOK . . . HEAD CASES SOUNDS AN ALARM BELL FOR OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM."

—OLIVER SACKS

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.