cover image Brain Surgeon: A Doctor’s Inspiring Encounters with Mortality and Miracles

Brain Surgeon: A Doctor’s Inspiring Encounters with Mortality and Miracles

Keith Black, , with Arnold Mann, foreword by Forest Whitaker. . Wellness Central, $25.99 (226pp) ISBN 978-0-446-58109-7

Black, chair of the department of neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, reflects on his extraordinary life and career. As an African-American growing up in Alabama and Ohio, Black benefited from the emphasis his scholarly parents put on learning: “I was brought up to believe there was nothing that I could not do,” and he published his first scientific paper at age 17 and went on to pioneer blood-brain barrier research to enable chemotherapy drugs to reach brain tumors directly. Introducing the reader to his colleagues and patients, Black tours the interior of the brain with detailed accounts of delicate surgical procedures: “Under the microscope I could see the delicate latticework of blood vessels covering the brainstem, all of which absolutely had to be preserved.” Documenting the risks and rewards of the procedures he performs, he also examines racial hurdles he had to leap to become a neurosurgeon. Black is equally skilled as an author, alternating incisive writing about incisions with his personal memoir, insightful and inspirational. (Mar. 25)