The Brain in Search of Itself

Benjamin Ehrlich has pulled off a surprise epic of scientific biography, brilliantly restoring the strange forgotten figure of Santiago Ramon y Cajal, the Don Quixote of Spanish science, to his original status as national treasure and outside winner of the Nobel Prize. It is a haunting story, colorfully told, with some of the quality of a folk tale. Boldly and vividly written, Ehrlich's book follows Cajal affectionately and patiently through all his struggles. Above all he makes Cajal's brain-research fascinating, and his lost Spain unforgettable. A marvellously accessible, fresh and thought-provoking book. --Richard Holmes, author of The Age of Wonder In this beautifully written biography, Benjamin Ehrlich brings to life the genius of Santiago Ramon y Cajal. It is the story of a boy from a tiny mountain village in Spain who goes on to the heights of scientific achievement, promoted by artistic talent comparable to that of the greatest draftsmen of the Renaissance. Cajal's vision of the brain, which Ehrlich lays out in an accessible way, is the cornerstone of modern neuroscience. --Larry W. Swanson, University Professor at the University of Southern California and author of Brain Architecture: Understanding the Basic Plan With this gracious and engrossing life, Benjamin Ehrlich mirrors his subject Santiago Ramon y Cajal's extraordinary quest to wrest an ordered schema from the almost inconceivable tangle of the brain's gelatinous muddle. With painstaking attention to detail, Ehrlich worries out the dazzlingly confounding intersections of chance and destiny, provenance and character, fate and freedom, that converge to shape an exemplary life. One life in probing search of another, the result being a sparkling gift for the rest of us. --Lawrence Weschler, author of And How are You, Dr Sacks? A Biographical Memoir of Oliver Sacks The Brain in Search of Itself is the beguiling story of 'the father of modern neuroscience, ' a man who sketched a beautiful, alluring portrait of the most complex object in the known universe. --Lisa Feldman Barrett, university distinguished professor at Northeastern University and author of How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain and Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain Written with a cool, fierce eye for details, The Brain in Search of Itself should appeal to a wide audience. Here is the first fully researched and fleshed-out biography in English of one of the founding fathers of neuroscience, a major figure in modern science. Cajal and his world come to vivid life in these pages. Benjamin Ehrlich is a natural writer, and this appealing narrative--which has the forward momentum of a good novel--tells a story that will astonish and delight readers. --Jay Parini, author of Borges and Me: An Encounter Santiago Ramon y Cajal is often called the father of neuroscience, yet until now, his own history has remained largely untold. In rich, poetic prose, Benjamin Ehrlich presents him here in the full context of his life and times. This is literary biography at its best, seamlessly uniting the personal and the scientific in a gripping epic with universal appeal. --Casey Schwartz, author of Attention, a Love Story and In the Mind Fields Thoroughly researched and beautifully written, The Brain in Search of Itself is an exceptional new biography of one of the most important neuroscientists who ever lived. Much as Cajal combined careful scientific study with his unique artistic sensibility to create striking depictions of the brain, Ehrlich unites rigorous scholarship and evocative prose to form a compelling portrait of Cajal himself--of his origins and intellectual growth, his dreams and disappointments, his crises, triumphs, and continuing legacy. To read this book is to understand the particular environment in which Cajal's genius developed, and to get as close as possible to the inner workings of his mind. --Ferris Jabr, contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and Scientific American Benjamin Ehrlich's biography tackles the big, unending questions that drove Santiago Ramon y Cajal to conceive of the neuron: Where does the soul reside? What are the structures that comprise dreams, memories, consciousness? The Brain in Search of Itself shows what it means to look, and to look closely, at a person's life. Through the lens of Cajal, an unlikely visionary, Ehrlich reveals a sweeping portrait of the history of neuroscience. Cajal brought an artist's imagination to the microscope, and in Ehrlich's attentive rendering, the scientist-artist's life appears like the brain itself: both material and ethereal at once. --Jenn Shapland, author of My Autobiography of Carson McCullers