This Is Your Brain On Parasites

“If you’ve ever doubted the power of microbes to shape society and offer us a grander view of life, read on and find yourself duly impressed.”-BookForum “A fascinating account of an extraordinary suite of biological phenomena, only recently come to light and proving that given enough time and enough evolving species to work with, natural selection can accomplish almost anything.” -Edward O. Wilson, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University, author of Consilience. “This book has all the elements of a crime thriller: violence, blood, gore, race and sex. But here the criminals are parasites. McAuliffe tells a vivid and sometimes horrifying tale of the hijackers that control our brains and our behaviour. In company with the best science writers, she shows us that reality can be way more interesting than fiction.” -Valerie Curtis, Director of the Environmental Health Group of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and author of Don’t Look, Don’t Touch, Don’t Eat “Be prepared to throw away all your preconceptions about the order of life. Humorous, inspiring and macabre—this is infectious reading in the tradition of giants like Robert S. Desowitz and Jared Diamond.” -Michael A Huffman, associate professor, Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University “From start to finish, [McAuliffe] spins a consistently engrossing tale of invasive creatures that can alter your behavior and outlook, depress your cognitive functioning, and even make you more violent or sexually aggressive.” – Heather Havrilesky, Book Forum —

Kathleen McAuliffe is a contributing editor to Discover. Her work has appeared in over a dozen national magazines, including Discover, the New York Times Magazine, Atlantic, and Smithsonian. From 1999 to 2006, she was also a health columnist for More. Her work has been published in Best American Science Writing, and has received several grants and awards, including a science writing fellowship from the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole. She has appeared numerous times on TV and radio, and was interviewed by To the Point, the nationally syndicated Osgood FIle, and other programs after her 2012 Atlantic feature “How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy” became the second most widely read article in the magazine’s history. McAuliffe lives in Miami with her husband—a research physicist—and her two children.