A highly original account of how literature and neuroscience interact to explain the relationship between the mind, body, and brain

Featuring a foreword by renowned neuroscientist Joseph E. LeDoux, this book is an illuminating, comprehensive survey of contemporary literature’s engagement with neuroscience. Jason Tougaw analyzes the works of contemporary writers—including Oliver Sacks, Temple Grandin, and Siri Hustvedt—arguing that their experiments with literary form offer a necessary counterbalance to a wider cultural neuromania that seeks out purely neural explanations for human behaviors as varied as reading, economics, empathy, and racism.

Jason Tougaw is associate professor of English at Queens College, City University of New York. He is the author of The One You Get: Portrait of a Family Organism and Strange Cases: The Medical Case History and the British Novel. He blogs at www.californica.net. He lives ins Cochecton, NY.