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 *

Sam Kean is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Disappearing Spoon and The Violinist’s Thumb. His writing has appeared in the New York Times magazine, Mental Floss, Slate and New Scientist. The Disappearing Spoon was shortlisted for the Royal Society Winton Prize for science writing.