cover image Phineas Gage: A Gruesome But True Story about Brain Science

Phineas Gage: A Gruesome But True Story about Brain Science

John Fleischman. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), $16 (86pp) ISBN 978-0-618-05252-3

Science writer John Fleischman uses a clipped, engaging expository style to tell the incredible story of the railroad worker who, in 1848, survived the piercing blast of a 13-pound iron rod as it entered below his cheekbone and exited the front of his skull in Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story about Brain Science. Photographs, glossary, a resource listing and index lend this textbook case the same sense of immediacy as do the words. (Mar.)