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bookstore selections:
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divinestra's digital neuropsychology bookstore
Selections by Anthony H. Risser, Ph.D.
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Month Eight
previous picks of the month
"Where is the Mango Princess?"
Cathy Crimmins
Knopf (September 2000) $19.20From the book's blurb:
"This is a book that Cathy Crimmins never hoped to write: The story of how a tragic accident nearly destroyed her family; of how in a split second their lives were changed forever.
In 1996, Cathy Crimmins, her husband, Alan, and their daughter, Kelly, were on an idyllic lakeside holiday when a boating accident left Alan in a deep coma, with severe damage to the frontal lobes of his brain, the area that controls speech, memory, movement, and personality. Where Is the Mango Princess? is the story of what happened to Cathy and her family after Alan woke up.
From the frustrations of dealing with doctors ("The first doctor, whom we call Dr. Asshole, swooped down from the great Neurosurgery in the Sky to tell me he has nothing to tell me") and insurance plans ("You know what our HMO's brain surgery plan is? They give your wife a Black & Decker drill and an instruction booklet") to the enigmas of personality, mortality, and modern science, Where Is the Mango Princess? is a chronicle of an unforgettable transformation.
Crimmins's story is full of unexpected and hard-won wisdom: a reminder of the precariousness of health, of fortune, of life itself; an indictment of HMOs and the bureaucrats bred by them; a lesson in how resilient love is, and how wide its compass. Most of all, though, it is Cathy's ability to confront absurdity head-on and not be undone by it that awes and inspires us, in what may be the most miraculous, the most healing, the most uniquely human trait of all -- the gift of wit, and how it held her together in the face of the worst life has to offer.
Writing with grace, candor, and remarkable clarity, Cathy Crimmins charts her husband's painful and often astonishing journey through the world of the brain-injured and takes readers on a voyage -- life-affirming in even its darkest moments -- through neurology, identity, and the mysteries of the human brain."
Month Seven
"Principles of Neural Science (4th edition)"
Eric R. Kandel, James H. Schwartz, and Thomas M. Jessell
McGraw-Hill, October 1999. Hardcover, $85.00.
Month Six
"Mapping the Mind"
Rita Carter and Christopher Frith
University of California Press, March 1999. Hardcover, $36.00.
Month Five
"Phantoms of the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind"
V.S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee
William Morrow & Company, September 1998. Hardcover, $18.90.
Month Four
"To See and See Again"
Tara Bahrampour
Farrar Straus & Giroux, January 1999. Hardcover, $16.80.
Month Three
"The Argument Culture: Stopping America's War of Words"
Deborah Tannen
Random House, March 1998. Hardcover, $17.50.
[Paperback, Ballantine Books, February 1999 $11.20]
Month Two
"Advice for a Young Investigator"
Santiago Ramón y Cajal
MIT Press, March 1999. Hardcover, $15.75
Month One
"Elegy for Iris"
John Bayley
St. Martins Press, January 1999. Hardcover, $16.07
Anthony Risser
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