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Publication date: May 2, 2023
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
ISBN-13: 978-1-63988-779-8
Retail Price: $50.00 Trade Paperback
Genre: Nonfiction, Medical, Neurology
Page Count: 382
Distribution: Ingram
With detailed case studies from her own patient database, combined with personal anecdotes and years of experience, Gondolo, a board-certified neurologist and author, deftly delves into the mysteries of human brain, revealing how it can upend lives with a myriad of chemical neurotransmitters coursing through millions of synapses. Gondolo’s writing is crisp, immensely approachable, and full of humanity. She writes interestingly and engagingly about many of the least understood mysteries of the brain. We meet a man dealing with loss of both right and left fusiform regions—the areas of facial recognition, making him unable to differentiate between people, an abusive husband seeking redemption as Parkinson’s disease weighs his psyche down, a 60-year-old man struggling with violent nightmares, a man in his forties dealing with coital headache and a frustrated wife. There are also a few medical mysteries, a list of symptoms clearly attributable to the COVID virus, personal stories, such as the author’s inability to deal with her brother’s death among others. Using these bittersweet stories to probe mystery behind the neurology of the brain, Gondolo has written an immensely intriguing and absorbing book. And though heartbreaking at times, the book’s message is one of inspiration: as we are not immortal and death is never far away, living in the present and appreciating all the simple joys life has to offer is the best course of action. Lucid and absolutely fascinating.
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