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	• Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath Michael Paul Mason Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

well written .. an engaging read!

I loved this book and read it in one sitting. As the mom of a TBI victim, it was an eye opening book. I felt a little disheartened by the grim reality presented by the author (he is a little gloomy .. ) but I think the book will inspire me to continue to be "a squeaky wheel" on my daughter's behalf.

I have QUITE the head injury library at this point, and many are written by survivors or family members with or without the help of a "ghost writer" and i think this leads to some pretty questionable writing and some of them are really hard to get through. HEAD CASES is extremely well written, and was pleasure to read.

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Difficult to read, difficult to put down

I was cringing all the way through this book, horrified at the accidents and the run-around that the injured get in our pathetic excuse for a health care system. Mason doesn't go too much into neuroscientific details, but focuses instead on how the injury has affected the injured, their lives and livelihood, their friends and family, and how they have learned or failed to learn to live with their deficits. Each chapter is a biography. Some are hopeful, all are illuminating.
I hope this book helps to raise public awareness about what a desperate state we are in with regards to being able to provide cost-effective care and therapy for people with TBI. Hundreds of brain-injured soldiers are coming back from Iraq and will need help integrating back into society.
Brookhaven Hospital in Tulsa, where the author is based, offers care that is tailored to the needs of each individual. No two brain injuries are the same and no two roads to recovery take the same route. This type of treatment needs to be available at more facilities, and it needs to be available to everybody who needs it, not just the wealthy.
Read it, give it to a friend, wear a helmet.

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Pass this book along to your friends and family

Mason opens our eyes to the realities of modern medicine, we learn that fixing the outside is often the simpler part of the equation. His insight & the passion he puts into each story makes for a captivating read. I walked away from this book realizing that unless we want to resign ourself to cities filed with "the walking dead" we must change the way society approaches Brain injury, this book is a call to arms, that's why I recommend you pass it along to friends & family-- or better yet have them buy their own & pass it on.

Insightful and mesmerizing.

This book is much more than informative, it brings to life the personal stories of each TBI victim it memorializes. Every individual account grips you and evokes a plethora of emotions. The author's scientifically enlightening and entertaining narratives leave you feeling a personal connection with the survivors. It is difficult to fathom the horrors some of these people have endured, but the author passionately and respectfully relays deeply personalized chronicles of their trials and tests, all while helping raise awareness of these types of catastrophic injuries. Injuries that could have easily happened to you or I or someone we love. Head Cases has given me a much better appreciation, and respect, for the fascinating machine inside my noggin. Though it has kind of made me want to go out and buy a helmet and a Volvo.

Definitely worth the read.

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Disturbing Tales of Our Collective Future

This is a frightening and sobering book, the kind you cannot put down at least till you reach the end of each chapter. Concisely written yet full of telling details,Michael takes us on his journey through the inadequacies of our ability to care for brain injured patients and he shares the saga of these survivors of TBI just when we are getting more by the thousands from Iraq. If we are going to appreciate the sacrifices of these soldiers and know what they need, and face, this book is a must read.

reviews: page 1, 2

Head Cases takes us into the dark side of the brain in an astonishing sequence of stories, at once true and strange, from the world of brain injury.

Michael Paul Mason is one of an elite group of experts who appear in the wake of tragic accidents and coordinate care that can last a lifetime. On the road with Mason, we encounter survivors of brain injuries as they struggle to map and make sense of the new worlds they inhabit. We meet a snowboarder whose life became permanently surreal after an errant jump; an "ultraviolent" child who has lost the brain's instinctive check on the impulse to strike out at others; a young man who cannot cry; and an Iraq war veteran whose odd maladies suggest that brain injury will be the war's most conspicuous legacy.

Underlying each of their stories is an exploration into the brain and its mysteries. When injured, the brain must figure out how to heal itself, reorganizing its physiology in order to do the job, and Mason gives us a series of vivid glimpses into brain science, the last frontier of medicine. We come away in awe of the miracles of the brain's workings and astonished at the fragility of the brain and the sense of self, life, and order that resides there. Head Cases echoes both Oliver Sacks and Raymond Carver, and is at once illuminating and deeply affecting.

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