Guy Leschziner is a professor of neurology and sleep medicine at King’s College London. He is the author of The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience and The Secret World of Sleep, and the forthcoming The Man Who Tasted Words, and is a presenter on BBC Radio 4 and the World Service.
I wrote...
The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep
By
Guy Leschziner
What is my book about?
A renowned neurologist shares the true stories of people unable to get a good night's rest in The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep, a fascinating exploration of the symptoms and syndromes behind sleep disorders. With compassionate stories of his patients and their conditions, Dr. Leschziner illustrates the neuroscience behind our sleeping minds, revealing the many biological and psychological factors necessary in getting the rest that will not only maintain our physical and mental health, but improve our cognitive abilities and overall happiness.
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The Books I Picked & Why
The House of God
By
Samuel Shem
Why this book?
By equal measure, horrifying, cynical and laugh-out-loud hilarious. A satire on the realities of medicine, but illustrating a fundamental truth of what it is to be a doctor. When this book was published in the 1970s, it rapidly became a medical classic, but was despised by some as showing an overly dark view of the medical world.
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Cutting for Stone
By
Abraham Verghese
Why this book?
An absolutely beautiful description of medicine in Africa, set against the backdrop of political unrest in Ethiopia in the 1960s. For me, this book evoked very strong memories of my brief stint in a hospital in Malawi. Verghese’s writing is so evocative of the sights and smells of East Africa.
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The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat And Other Clinical Tales
By
Oliver Sacks
Why this book?
This is the book that triggered my career in clinical neurology. A classic of the medical genre, a humane but deeply technical examination of the nervous system through Sacks’ own patients. Sacks’ own personality oozes from every page.
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When Breath Becomes Air
By
Paul Kalanithi
Why this book?
The autobiography of a young neurosurgeon, his diagnosis with cancer, and his transition from doctor to patient. A moving discussion on mortality, and the gap between the idealism of medicine and the reality of its practice.
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It's All in Your Head: Stories from the Frontline of Psychosomatic Illness
By
Suzanne O'Sullivan
Why this book?
For doctors and patients alike, it is almost impossible to understand how some of the most dramatic conditions we see – seizures, paralysis, blindness – may have an underlying psychological basis. In this book, O’Sullivan explains the basis of psychosomatic illness with skill, illustrating this area of neurological practice with fascinating case studies.