100 books like Scar Tissue

By Michael Ignatieff,

Here are 100 books that Scar Tissue fans have personally recommended if you like Scar Tissue. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Permanent Present Tense: The Unforgettable Life of the Amnesic Patient, H. M.

Sandeep Jauhar Author Of My Father's Brain: Life in the Shadow of Alzheimer's

From my list on the complexities of Alzheimer's and dementia.

Why am I passionate about this?

For nearly 7 years I watched my father decline from Alzheimer’s. It was perhaps the most difficult journey I’ve ever taken. My book, My Father’s Brain, is a memoir of my relationship with my father as he succumbed to his disease, but it is also a scientific and historical inquiry into the fragility of the brain. In the book, I set my father’s descent into dementia alongside my own journey, as a doctor, writer, and son, toward understanding this mysterious and devastating disease.

Sandeep's book list on the complexities of Alzheimer's and dementia

Sandeep Jauhar Why did Sandeep love this book?

Corkin, a research psychologist, presents a fascinating case study of her patient, Henry Molaison, a man with no memory. Molaison—or H.M., as he was known in the scientific literature until his death in 2008—was a 27-year-old with severe epilepsy when he underwent radical brain surgery in 1953 to cure his intractable seizures.

Though Molaison’s seizures largely abated after the operation, he developed an even bigger problem, which manifested almost immediately after his surgery. Daily events vanished from his mind almost as soon as they had occurred.

Like most patients living with dementia, he could form no new long-term memories. With no new memories, he lived in a perpetual present, disconnected from his past (or at least the past after his surgery) and his future.

By Suzanne Corkin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Permanent Present Tense as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In 1953, 27-year-old Henry Gustave Molaison underwent an experimental psychosurgical" procedure,a targeted lobotomy,in an effort to alleviate his debilitating epilepsy. The outcome was unexpected,when Henry awoke, he could no longer form new memories, and for the rest of his life would be trapped in the moment. But Henry's tragedy would prove a gift to humanity. As renowned neuroscientist Suzanne Corkin explains in Permanent Present Tense , she and her colleagues brought to light the sharp contrast between Henry's crippling memory impairment and his preserved intellect. This new insight that the capacity for remembering is housed in a specific brain area…


Book cover of In Pursuit of Memory: The Fight Against Alzheimer's

Sandeep Jauhar Author Of My Father's Brain: Life in the Shadow of Alzheimer's

From my list on the complexities of Alzheimer's and dementia.

Why am I passionate about this?

For nearly 7 years I watched my father decline from Alzheimer’s. It was perhaps the most difficult journey I’ve ever taken. My book, My Father’s Brain, is a memoir of my relationship with my father as he succumbed to his disease, but it is also a scientific and historical inquiry into the fragility of the brain. In the book, I set my father’s descent into dementia alongside my own journey, as a doctor, writer, and son, toward understanding this mysterious and devastating disease.

Sandeep's book list on the complexities of Alzheimer's and dementia

Sandeep Jauhar Why did Sandeep love this book?

A British neuroscientist, Jebelli travels around the world to discover the latest in dementia research.

He goes to Papua New Guinea, Japan, India, and China to learn about experimental (but mostly futile) treatments, including stem cells, blood transfusions and repurposed cancer drugs.

In the end, he acknowledges how little medicine currently has to offer patients living with dementia, even as he holds out hope (far-fetched, in my view) for a cure in 10 years.

By Joseph Jebelli,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked In Pursuit of Memory as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

For readers of Atul Gawande, Siddhartha Mukherjee, and Henry Marsh, a riveting, gorgeously written biography of one of history's most fascinating and confounding diseases -- Alzheimer's -- from its discovery more than 100 years ago to today's race towards a cure.

Alzheimer's is the great global epidemic of our time, affecting millions worldwide -- there are more than 5 million people diagnosed in the US alone. And as our population ages, scientists are working against the clock to find a cure.

Neuroscientist Joseph Jebelli is among them. His beloved grandfather had Alzheimer's and now he's written the book he needed…


Book cover of Dementia: Living in the Memories of God

Sandeep Jauhar Author Of My Father's Brain: Life in the Shadow of Alzheimer's

From my list on the complexities of Alzheimer's and dementia.

Why am I passionate about this?

For nearly 7 years I watched my father decline from Alzheimer’s. It was perhaps the most difficult journey I’ve ever taken. My book, My Father’s Brain, is a memoir of my relationship with my father as he succumbed to his disease, but it is also a scientific and historical inquiry into the fragility of the brain. In the book, I set my father’s descent into dementia alongside my own journey, as a doctor, writer, and son, toward understanding this mysterious and devastating disease.

Sandeep's book list on the complexities of Alzheimer's and dementia

Sandeep Jauhar Why did Sandeep love this book?

Swinton, chair in divinity and religious studies at the University of Aberdeen, focuses on the ways the standard model of dementia, which views the disease almost exclusively as a consequence of brain damage, is incomplete.

Patients with dementia, Swinton notes, can have varying degrees of brain damage. Some whose autopsies revealed significant damage manifested little clinical impairment while alive. Others with only minor neuropathology had full-blown symptoms.

Therefore, Swinton argues, it is clear that social environments, through implicit messaging or explicit neglect, worsen the demented condition. What is called for is an approach based on respect and dignity.

By John Swinton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Dementia as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Dementia is one of the most feared diseases in Western society today. Some have even gone so far as to suggest euthanasia as a solution to the perceived indignity of memory loss and the disorientation that accompanies it.

In this book John Swinton develops a practical theology of dementia for caregivers, people with dementia, ministers, hospital chaplains, and medical practitioners as he explores two primary questions: Who am I when I've forgotten who I am? What does it mean to love God and be loved by God when I have forgotten who God is? Offering compassionate and carefully considered theological…


Book cover of We Are Not Ourselves

Sandeep Jauhar Author Of My Father's Brain: Life in the Shadow of Alzheimer's

From my list on the complexities of Alzheimer's and dementia.

Why am I passionate about this?

For nearly 7 years I watched my father decline from Alzheimer’s. It was perhaps the most difficult journey I’ve ever taken. My book, My Father’s Brain, is a memoir of my relationship with my father as he succumbed to his disease, but it is also a scientific and historical inquiry into the fragility of the brain. In the book, I set my father’s descent into dementia alongside my own journey, as a doctor, writer, and son, toward understanding this mysterious and devastating disease.

Sandeep's book list on the complexities of Alzheimer's and dementia

Sandeep Jauhar Why did Sandeep love this book?

Thomas’s 2015 novel revolves around Eileen Leary, a tough Irish American nurse yearning to break the middle-class mold in which her life is set when her husband, Ed, a neuroscientist, develops early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Thomas describes his slow deterioration and the ravages inflicted on Eileen and their son, Connell, in drawn-out moments and exquisite detail. In an especially harrowing scene, Eileen stays up all night watching her once brilliant husband struggle with the simple task of tabulating the final grades in his community college class.

Though the narrative sometimes gets bogged down in minutiae, it is as unsparing an account of Alzheimer’s as I have ever read.

By Matthew Thomas,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked We Are Not Ourselves as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

SHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES TAIT BLACK PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD
NOMINATED FOR THE FOLIO PRIZE
NAMED A NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES

A stunning, heartbreaking debut - 'We Are Not Ourselves' is both the intimate story of a family and an epic of the American Century.

Eileen Leary wants more. Raised in a downtrodden area of new York by hard-drinking, Irish immigrant parents, she dreams of another life: a better job, a bigger house, more respectable friends, a happy family. When she meets Ed Leary, a brilliant young scientist, she thinks…


Book cover of A Tattoo on My Brain: A Neurologist's Personal Battle Against Alzheimer's Disease

Jason Karlawish Author Of The Problem of Alzheimer's: How Science, Culture, and Politics Turned a Rare Disease Into a Crisis and What We Can Do about It

From my list on making sense of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a physician and a writer. Together, they create a matrix of practice, research, and writing. I care for patients at the Penn Memory Center and am a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where I teach and study topics at the intersections of bioethics, aging, and the neurosciences. I wrote The Problem of Alzheimer’s: How Science, Culture, and Politics Turned a Rare Disease into a Crisis and What We Can Do About It and the novel Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont and essays for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, The Hill, STAT, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. I raise whippets, and I’m a passionate reader of the physician and poet John Keats. 

Jason's book list on making sense of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia

Jason Karlawish Why did Jason love this book?

This first-person account of living with a biomarker-defined diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease is a clearly written story of two very distinct, even antagonistic experiences. There’s the highly subjective experience of being a patient and the highly objective experience of being a physician who has diagnosed and cared for persons with the same disease. In one book is one narrative of two perspectives embodied in one person. The result is an unadorned account of what it’s like to lose one’s mind just a little bit at a time. Case in point is his account of apathy. I’m routinely prescribing this book to my patients. 

By Daniel Gibbs, Teresa H. Barker,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Tattoo on My Brain as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Dr Daniel Gibbs is one of 50 million people worldwide with an Alzheimer's disease diagnosis. Unlike most patients with Alzheimer's, however, Dr Gibbs worked as a neurologist for twenty-five years, caring for patients with the very disease now affecting him. Also unusual is that Dr Gibbs had begun to suspect he had Alzheimer's several years before any official diagnosis could be made. Forewarned by genetic testing showing he carried alleles that increased the risk of developing the disease, he noticed symptoms of mild cognitive impairment long before any tests would have alerted him. In this highly personal account, Dr Gibbs…


Book cover of A Dignified Life: The Best Friends Approach to Alzheimer's Care: A Guide for Care Partners

Laura Wayman Author Of A Loving Approach to Dementia Care: Making Meaningful Connections While Caregiving

From my list on dementia and how to find joy while caregiving.

Why am I passionate about this?

During my decades of working with caregivers as a dementia care expert, I have heard many accounts of what the experience is like—from the sad and hollow to experiences rich in significance. Everyone faces obstacles when caring for a loved one; some of these obstacles come in the form of uncomfortable or painful emotional histories or past unresolved conflicts. After each opportunity to raise awareness and understanding about how dementia impacts individuals, their families, and their communities, I have been gratified to witness enhanced feelings of hope and comfort for all involved. It is my hope that through this book I will enter your home or your professional caregiving setting and work alongside you. 

Laura's book list on dementia and how to find joy while caregiving

Laura Wayman Why did Laura love this book?

This book shows you how to meet many of the daily challenges of caring for someone with dementia. Illustrated through the heartfelt stories of others this book shows your how The Best Friends method brings dignity to the lives of those presenting dementia symptoms and those who are caring for them.

I found the explanation of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia symptoms very interesting and helpful, specifically how this type of loss and experience can make the individual feel. I appreciated learning additional and successful ways to respond and communicate to many situations that caregivers face when caring for any individual with any cause of dementia symptoms.

Dementia care is complex and different for every person, and I am always looking for new perspectives and care approaches to share with family and professional care providers that can give confidence and feelings of empowerment to anyone on their individual dementia care journey-and…

By Virginia Bell, David Troxel,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Dignified Life as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

More than 5 million Americans are currently living with Alzheimer's disease or a related form of dementia. By the year 2030, experts estimate that as many as 66 million people around the world will be faced with this life-altering disease. Unfortunately, these staggering statistics impact millions of caregivers, too. Compared with all types of caregivers, those who assist someone with dementia experience the highest levels of burnout, depression, poor health, and premature death. A Dignified Life, Revised and Expanded offers hope and help with a proven approach.

Ten years ago, the first edition of A Dignified Life changed the way…


Book cover of Leaving Tinkertown

Ann Campanella Author Of Motherhood: Lost and Found: A memoir

From my list on inspiring memoirs about Alzheimer’s and Dementia.

Why am I passionate about this?

An author of a caregiving memoir myself, I’m also a former magazine and newspaper editor who has had the opportunity to read and write about many topics. For the past five years, I have been a manager and director of AlzAuthors, an online global organization that offers the world’s most comprehensive collection of books and blogs on Alzheimer’s and dementia. To say I have done a lot of reading on this subject is an understatement. I’ve been honored to work with so many talented and big-hearted authors who share their Alzheimer’s and dementia experiences. Being immersed in the Alzheimer’s world through AlzAuthors has given me insight into many of the best memoirs on this subject.   

Ann's book list on inspiring memoirs about Alzheimer’s and Dementia

Ann Campanella Why did Ann love this book?

Leaving Tinkertown is a romp of a memoir that takes the reader behind the scenes of Tinkertown, her father’s colorful roadside attraction in New Mexico. As Ross Ward descends into Alzheimer's, we learn what it was like growing up with this man and how Tanya’s complicated but tender history with him both repels and pulls her back home. Tanya’s writing is gorgeous, and this memoir is both vivid and heartbreaking! It’s a story you won’t soon forget.

By Tanya Ward Goodman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Leaving Tinkertown as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When Tanya Ward Goodman came home to New Mexico to visit her dad at the end of 1996, he was fifty-five years old and just beginning to show symptoms of the Alzheimer's disease that would kill him six years later. Early onset dementia is a shock and a challenge to every family, but the Wards were not an ordinary family. Ross Ward was an eccentric artist and collector whose unique museum, Tinkertown, brought visitors from all over the world to the Sandia Mountains outside Albuquerque. In this book Tanya tells Ross's story and her own, sharing the tragedy and the…


Book cover of The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for People Who Have Alzheimer Disease and Other Dementias

Andrew E. Budson and Maureen K. O'Connor Author Of Six Steps to Managing Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia: A Guide for Families

From my list on to understand dementia.

Why are we passionate about this?

As a neurologist and neuropsychologist team who have spent their entire clinical, teaching, and research careers focused on individuals and their families experiencing memory loss, Alzheimer’s disease, and dementia, our goal is simple. We want to empower individuals and their families with the tools they need to manage memory loss, Alzheimer’s disease, and dementia. We work to balance pharmacological and nonpharmacological management, as well as the needs of the individual with those of their family. Reading books like the ones in our list plus articles in medical journals keeps us current with the progress in the science of dementia and the humanity of individuals and families living with the disease. 

Andrew's book list on to understand dementia

Andrew E. Budson and Maureen K. O'Connor Why did Andrew love this book?

Now in its 7th edition, this book is the classic guide to caregiving for individuals with dementia. Comprehensive, and filled with stories and anecdotes, it is packed with valuable information on dementia and the behaviors that dementia engenders. We have read it several times and have recommended it to hundreds if not thousands of families. 

By Nancy L. Mace, Peter V. Rabins,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The 36-Hour Day as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

With over 3.5 million copies sold, the bestselling guide to understanding and caring for people with dementia is now completely revised and updated!

For 40 years, The 36-Hour Day has been the leading work in the field for caregivers of those with dementia. Written by experts with decades of experience caring for individuals with memory loss, Alzheimer's, and other dementias, the book is widely known for its authoritativeness and compassionate approach to care. Featuring everything from the causes of dementia to managing its early stages to advice on caring for those in the later stages of the disease, it is…


Book cover of The Experience of Alzheimer's Disease: Life Through a Tangled Veil

Julian C. Hughes Author Of Thinking Through Dementia

From my list on personhood and dementia.

Why am I passionate about this?

As an old age psychiatrist, I was naturally interested in dementia. But I’m also trained to doctoral level in philosophy. I’ve been both an honorary professor of philosophy of ageing (at Newcastle) and a professor of old age psychiatry (at Bristol). Whilst training in psychiatry at Oxford, I came across the work of Tom Kitwood. Subsequently, I’ve become great friends with Steve Sabat. His work and Kitwood’s brought home to me the complexity of personhood and its relevance to how we care for and think about people living with dementia. And the more you consider it, the more the notion of personhood broadens out to include citizenship and human rights.

Julian's book list on personhood and dementia

Julian C. Hughes Why did Julian love this book?

Difficult for me not to gush about this book by my good friend! It is amazingly rich. It builds on Kitwood, introducing the idea of ‘malignant positioning’. It deepens Kitwood’s approach to personhood using William Stern’s notion of ‘Critical Personalism’. Steve sets out how, from a social constructionist standpoint, we can give different accounts of selfhood. He shows how these remain relevant even as dementia advances. The richness, for me, comes from the verbatim accounts of people with whom Steve worked closely over an extended period of time. Theory and reality come together. We get to know real people and see into the intricacies of their lives. The importance of the new culture of dementia care – where seeing the person as a psychosocial being is imperative – becomes utterly compelling. 

By Steven R. Sabat,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Experience of Alzheimer's Disease as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

At a time when the incidence of Alzheimera s Disease is increasing dramatically, this accessible account revolutionises our stereotypes of Alzheimera s patients and their care.


Book cover of Finding the Right Words: A Story of Literature, Grief, and the Brain

Jason Karlawish Author Of The Problem of Alzheimer's: How Science, Culture, and Politics Turned a Rare Disease Into a Crisis and What We Can Do about It

From my list on making sense of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a physician and a writer. Together, they create a matrix of practice, research, and writing. I care for patients at the Penn Memory Center and am a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where I teach and study topics at the intersections of bioethics, aging, and the neurosciences. I wrote The Problem of Alzheimer’s: How Science, Culture, and Politics Turned a Rare Disease into a Crisis and What We Can Do About It and the novel Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont and essays for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, The Hill, STAT, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. I raise whippets, and I’m a passionate reader of the physician and poet John Keats. 

Jason's book list on making sense of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia

Jason Karlawish Why did Jason love this book?

This book is a kind of detective story. It returns to the scene of a long-ago committed crime, namely the incomplete diagnosis and substandard care Jerry Weinstein received in an indifferent health care system and a culture haunted by stigmas. The authors are a masterful team. Bruce Miller is a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco’s Memory and Aging Center. He’s a widely-recognized expert in the diagnosis and classification of neurodegenerative diseases. Cindy Weinstein is a professor of English literature who focuses on the 19th century American novel. Weinstein’s expertise is Herman Melville, the master of narratives of dissection.

Jerry, Cindy’s father, died in 1997 after a years-long struggle with an inadequately diagnosed and neglected dementia. Together, physicians and literary scholars reconstruct what happened. By putting words to the problem, they make sense of what was painful nonsense. This is the book to understand the value of…

By Cindy Weinstein, Bruce L. Miller,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Finding the Right Words as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The moving story of an English professor studying neurology in order to understand and come to terms with her father's death from Alzheimer's.

In 1985, when Cindy Weinstein was a graduate student at UC Berkeley, her beloved father, Jerry, was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. He was fifty-eight years old. Twelve years later, at age seventy, he died having lost all of his memories-along with his ability to read, write, and speak.

Finding the Right Words follows Weinstein's decades-long journey to come to terms with her father's dementia as both a daughter and an English professor. Although her lifelong love…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Alzheimer's disease, death, and dementia?

Death 391 books
Dementia 96 books