The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery

The Tale of the Duelling Neurosurgeons

From the author of the bestseller The Disappearing Spoon, a new history of the brain told via fascinating tales of the greatest and most astounding injuries in neuroscience

Kean's lively new book unpacks a bundle of fascinating, alarming and sometimes heartbreaking case histories

Entertaining... Some of his stories are astonishing... Kean tells a good story and asks the right questions

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

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

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.

For centuries, scientists had only one way to study the brain: wait for misfortune to strike - strokes, seizures, infections, lobotomies, horrendous accidents, phantom limbs, Siamese twins - and see how the victims changed afterwards. In many cases their survival was miraculous, and observers marvelled at the transformations that took place when different parts of the brain were destroyed. Parents suddenly couldn't recognise their children. Pillars of the community became pathological liars and paedophiles. Some people couldn't speak but could still sing. Others couldn't read but could write. 
The stories of these people laid the foundations of modern neuroscience and, century by century, key cases taught scientists what every last region of the brain did. With lucid explanations and incisive wit, Sam Kean explores the brain's secret passageways and recounts the forgotten tales of the ordinary individuals whose struggles, resilience and deep humanity made neuroscience possible.

And other extraordinary true stories as written by our DNA

The Violinist's Thumb

The epic true story of human DNA and what it can tell us about our world

The Violinist's Thumb is one of the Ten Books to Look Out for in 2012

A fast-paced, breezy romp through history using DNA as a unifying theme... it’s nerd-vana

Explored in his Bryson-esque style, [The Violinist's Thumb] provokes fascinating stuff, full of oddball stories and amazing facts. Kean's book is full of wonderfully weird anecdotes, but it's also an accessible history of the discovery and mapping of DNA... compellingly entertaining

Sam Kean is the best science teacher you never had

[Kean] writes with a humor and humanity that make him poised to become the next Brian Greene, maybe, or Oliver Sacks - explaining small corners of the universe one case study at a time

An excellent book – highly readable and with lots of great stories

Kean’s real knack is for digging up strange details most textbooks leave out … the book is an engaging history

Though his subject is a serious one, Mr. Kean enlivens his narrative with an appealing sense of humor... Kean’s witty style nicely blends facts and stories in an engaging package

The wonderful thing about Kean… is his ability to focus on a spiraling narrative while he climbs up the double-helix ladder in this history of genetics… It is a handsome story

Enthralling... wonderfully witty... Kean's thoughtful, humorous book is a joy to read

Anyone reading this fine book could be excused for asking, with wide-eyed amazement: is there anything DNA can’t do?

Sam Kean spent years collecting mercury from broken thermometers as a child and now he is a writer in Washington DC. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Mental Floss, Slate, Air &amp; Space/Smithsonian and New Scientist. In 2009 he was a runner-up for the National Association of Science Writers' Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award for best science writer under the age of thirty. He currently writes for Science. His first book, The Disappearing Spoon, was a New York Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Royal Society's Winton Prize for science writing.

Did the human race almost go extinct? Can genetics explain a cat lady's love for felines? How does DNA lead to people with no fingerprints or humans born with tails? And how did the right combination of genes create the exceptionally flexible thumbs and fingers of a truly singular violinist? 
 
Unravelling the genetic code hasn't always been easy - from its earliest days, genetics has been rife with infighting, backstabbing and controversial theories - but scientists can now finally read the astounding stories inscribed in our DNA. As we make advances into DNA mapping and modification, genetics will continue to be the hottest topic in science, shaping the very make-up of our bodies and the world around us. 
 
With the same masterful combination of science, history and culture he brought to The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean untangles the secrets of our genetic code, explaining how genetics has shaped our past and how DNA will determine humankind's future.

The Disappearing Spoon...and other true tales from the Periodic Table

Fascinating and hilarious true stories from the Periodic Table - Shortlisted for the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books 2011

Kean has Bill Bryson's comic touch... a lively history of the elements and the characters behind their discovery

A wealth of fascinating stories with a dazzling cast of heroes and villains. Written with gusto and backed by a mind-boggling amount of research, this is a real page turner

One of the most readable and entertaining books about science yet published ... [Kean] is master of enlightening metaphors

The periodic table meets the best-seller list with Sam Kean's Disappearing Spoon, an engaging tour of the elements... with the éclat of raw sodium dropped in a beaker of water

the anecdotal flourishes of Oliver Sacks and the populist accessibility of Malcolm Gladwell

A superb read... This book stands comparison with Primo Levi's The Periodic Table, and indeed of the two I prefer it

This book is entirely entertaining - it's a real page turner, and there's very little not to like about the combination of a string of QI like fascinating facts with a whole slew of engaging stories... a delight to read, taking a very predictable subject and approaching it in an entertaining, original and informative way... if you want to be entertained and find out lots of history and fascinating facts around the elements themselves, this is the one for you

A science book you didn't have to get beaten up in high school to read

Only once in a rare while does an author come along with the craft and the vision to capture the fun and fascination of chemistry. The Disappearing Spoon is a pleasure and full of insights. If only I had read it before taking chemistry

Sam Kean spent years collecting mercury from broken thermometers as a child and now he is a writer in Washington DC. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Mental Floss, Slate, Air &amp; Space/Smithsonian and New Scientist. In 2009 he was a runner-up for the National Association of Science Writers' Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award for best science writer under the age of thirty. He currently writes for Science. This is his first book.

Why did Gandhi hate iodine (I, 53)? Why did the Japanese kill Godzilla with missiles made of cadmium (Cd, 48)? How did radium (Ra, 88) nearly ruin Marie Curie's reputation? And why did tellurium (Te, 52) lead to the most bizarre gold rush in history? 
 
The periodic table is one of our crowning scientific achievements, but it's also a treasure trove of passion, adventure, betrayal and obsession. The fascinating tales in The Disappearing Spoon follow carbon, neon, silicon, gold and every single element on the table as they play out their parts in human history, finance, mythology, conflict, the arts, medicine and the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them. 
 
Why did a little lithium (Li, 3) help cure poet Robert Lowell of his madness? And how did gallium (Ga, 31) become the go-to element for laboratory pranksters? The Disappearing Spoon has the answers, fusing science with the classic lore of invention, investigation, discovery and alchemy, from the big bang through to the end of time.

Sam Kean

Absorbing, entertaining... provocative but compelling... eminently accessible and enjoyable. A real gas - in short!

Funny, clever and altogether effervescent... Kean writes superbly about science itself... A joy for any reader

There is no denying the pleasure and indeed the wealth of scientific information to be obtained from reading Caesar’s Last Breath. It will change forever the way I think about breathing.

Kean is the teacher you wish you'd had: genial, companionable and infectiously enthusiastic. This is an entertaining and accessible guide to the mysterious vapour of gases. Popular science at its best.

It’s a helluva read. And it’s a gas.

An altogether excellent read, an invigorating and stylish mixture of chemistry, history and reportage that brings to light many of the untold stories of the air that surrounds and sustains us

This vibrant, fact-filled science book makes the chemistry of air riveting

Told with Kean’s trademark combination of goofy wisecracking and an exceptional knack for communicating the principles of science

Fascinating stories, so insightful, informative, and disarmingly written. It gave this astronaut a new respect for the air around us all, and made me delightfully more aware of each breath I take.

Col. Chris Hadfield, author of An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth

Brims with such fascinating tales of chemical history that it'll change the very way you think about breathing.... Kean crams the book full of wild yarns told with humorously dramatic flair.... The effect is oddly intimate, the way all good storytelling is -- you feel like you're sharing moments of geeky amusement with a particularly hip chemistry teacher

The most fun to be had from nonfiction is a good science book, with a writer of craft who can capture both the excitement and the elegance of science, the incredible fact that this is really how it works. Sam Kean is such a writer and Caesar's Last Breath is such a book. An enormous pleasure to read.

Sam Kean has done it again - this time clearly and entertainingly explaining the science of the air around us. He is a gifted storyteller with a knack for finding the magic hidden in the everyday.

The Epic Story of The Air Around Us

** GUARDIAN SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 ** 
 
‘Popular science at its best’ 
Mail on Sunday 
 
‘Eminently accessible and enjoyable’ 
Observer 
 
With every breath, you literally inhale the history of the world. On the ides of March, 44 BC, Julius Caesar died of stab wounds in the Roman Senate, but the story of his last breath is still unfolding. In fact, you're probably inhaling some of it now. Of the sextillions of molecules entering or leaving your lungs at this moment, some might also bear traces of Cleopatra's perfumes, German mustard gas, particles exhaled by dinosaurs or emitted by atomic bombs, even remnants of stardust from the universe's creation. 
 
In Caesar’s Last Breath, New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean takes us on a journey through the periodic table, around the globe and across time to tell the epic story of the air we breathe.

Sam Kean

Praise for Caesar's Last Breath

Absorbing, entertaining... provocative but compelling... eminently accessible and enjoyable. A real gas - in short!

Funny, clever and altogether effervescent... Kean writes superbly about science itself... A joy for any reader

There is no denying the pleasure and indeed the wealth of scientific information to be obtained from reading Caesar’s Last Breath. It will change forever the way I think about breathing.

Absorbing, entertaining... provocative but compelling... eminently accessible and enjoyable. A real gas - in short!

Funny, clever and altogether effervescent... Kean writes superbly about science itself... A joy for any reader

There is no denying the pleasure and indeed the wealth of scientific information to be obtained from reading Caesar’s Last Breath. It will change forever the way I think about breathing.

Absorbing, entertaining... provocative but compelling... eminently accessible and enjoyable. A real gas - in short!

Funny, clever and altogether effervescent... Kean writes superbly about science itself... A joy for any reader

There is no denying the pleasure and indeed the wealth of scientific information to be obtained from reading Caesar’s Last Breath. It will change forever the way I think about breathing.

Books by Sam Kean

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