Soul Made Flesh : The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World

Rating:
Summary: The search for consciousness
Review: Ths book is an excellent historical background to man's attempts to understand his own mind. It's also a great primer for some of the theories man has held about his own anatomy and
consciousness.

The author keeps it interesting by tracking the story to the lives Thomas Willis and his buddies at Oxford who must skillfully skate through a minefield of intellectual dogma and even civil war to lay the foundations for scientific mehtod.

The author does a fine job of turning history into a story and ends up teaching the reader quite a bit.

As a bonus the author gives us a short but thoughtful conclusion. Showing how modern researchers continue the quest for the answer to the question what is "man".

Rating:
Summary: Great History & Science
Review: Zimmer makes history lively and science understandable. It's incredible how much of our current understanding of ourselves was first proposed by Dr. Willis and his colleagues. A must read if you're interested in neuroscience.