Unthinkable: An Extraordinary Journey Through the World’s Strangest Brains

Thomson, a writer for New Scientist magazine, spent two years interviewing people with unusual neurological disorders, and here shares nine of the most fascinating stories she heard. The interviewees include a woman from Denver who gets lost in her own house; a man from Bilbao, Spain, whose synesthesia gives him the impression of seeing other people’s “auras”; and a London math teacher prone to musical hallucinations. Rather than focusing on the disorders, Thomson places the people at the forefront, exploring their varying responses to their conditions and intense struggles to live “normal” lives. Lay readers will value her ability to render scientific terms and theories accessible, and her corresponding skill as a storyteller. In one particularly memorable episode, the author travels to the United Arab Emirates to meet with a 40-year-old man suffering from lycanthropy, a rare syndrome involving delusions of transformation—in this case, into a tiger. She also visits a British woman who suffers from depersonalization—the feeling of becoming detached from oneself—and chats with a man who once believed himself to be dead. Throughout, Thomson emphasizes “we are our brains,” convincingly showing that these strange minds belong to people from whom much can be learned, in a book that will please fans of the late Oliver Sacks. [em](June) [/em]