Phineas Gage was truly a man with a hole in his head. Phineas, a railroad construction foreman, was blasting rock near Cavendish, Vermont, in 1848 when a thirteen-pound iron rod was shot through his brain. Miraculously, he survived to live another eleven years and become a textbook case in brain science.

At the time, Phineas Gage seemed to completely recover from his accident. He could walk, talk, work, and travel, but he was changed. Gage

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"At age 37, Harvard neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a massive left-hemisphere stroke that took away her ability to speak, walk, read, write, or remember any of her life-and gave her an unprecedented, profound experience of dwelling in the right hemisphere and the sense of oneness and peace to be found there. Her recovery led to her writing the New York Times bestseller My Stroke of Insight, being named one of Time Magazine's Most Influential...

"In Iraq, as a combat physician and officer, Jon Kerstetter balanced two impossibly conflicting imperatives - to heal and to kill. When he suffered an injury and then a stroke during his third tour, he wound up back home in Iowa, no longer able to be either a doctor or a soldier. In this gorgeous memoir that moves from his impoverished upbringing on an Oneida reservation, to his harrowing stints as a volunteer medic in Kosovo and Bosnia, through the...

Documents the author's marriage to a fellow Iraq War veteran, describing the impact of his brain injury on their relationship, their shared efforts to overcome post-traumatic stress, and the lack of support for veterans.

After being brutally attacked outside a bar and recovering from a coma and extensive physical injuries, Mark Hogancamp suffered brain damage and nearly total memory loss. Unable to afford therapy he spent the next few years building a scale model, World War II-era town, Marwencol, populated with dolls, where he lived out his fantasy life, and which he documented in photographs. When his photographs were discovered by an art magazine, a New York gallery...